WASHINGTON — South Korea’s conservative leaders may not like it, but the race to the 2018 Winter Olympics has entered a new and unpredictably political phase now that the International Olympics Committee (IOC) has awarded the 2018 Games to obscure Pyeongchang district in a region of low-lying mountains near the Korean east coast.
South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak reacts as the International Olympic Committee, IOC, announces in Durban, South Africa on July 6 that Pyeongchang was awarded the 2018 Winter Olympics. AP/Kim Ludbrook
As 2018 approaches, we’re in for non-stop campaigning to bring North Korea into the fray — if not co-hosting the games, then forming joint teams with South Koreans. That’s going to be a campaign issue during the next election for president of South Korea at the end of 2012, and it will be an even bigger issue during the campaigning for president in 2017.
That’s not just because the leader of the opposition Democratic Party, Sohn Hak-kyu, came up with the idea of a joint North-South team hours after the IOC, meeting in Durban, South Africa, voted overwhelmingly for Pyeongchang.
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The likely candidate of the ruling Grand National Party, Park Geun-hye, daughter of the long-ruling Park Chung-hee, assassinated by his intelligence chief in 1979, may also want some accommodation with North Korea.
She has the distinction of having called on North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-Il in Pyongyang a few years ago and undoubtedly will try to pursue some level of reconciliation with North Korea after the rising confrontation during President Lee Myung-Bak’s term.
Lee, under South Korea’s constitution, promulgated after rioting against then-president Chun Doo-Hwan shook the country in June 1987, cannot run for a second term. Although he ordered and led the winning campaign for the bid, he’ll be in the role of an historical figure, not forgotten but not sharing in the glory, when the Games in Pyeongchang finally begin.
Lee’s lieutenants, the bureaucrats who fought to bring the Games to Pyeongchang, view the prospect of sharing the fun with the North Koreans with the deepest repugnance. As far as they’re concerned, North Korea wants to crash the party after the South did all the work to make it happen, losing in two previous campaigns for the Winter Olympics.
That attitude, however, makes it all the easier for Sohn Hak-kyu and a wide range of opposition politicos to hold the government partly responsible for the rapid deterioration of relations under Lee.
The opposition no longer tries to claim that the sinking of the South Korean navy corvette the Cheonan in the Yellow Sea in March of last year was all an accident, maybe caused by an unexploded mine. They say, however, that the South provoked North Korea into such behavior by passing up opportunities to negotiate while pursuing a “hardline”, no compromise policy.
As for the other incident last year that shook up inter-Korean relations, namely the shelling in November of Yeonpyeong Island, also in the Yellow Sea, opposition figures like to say North Korea would not have felt compelled to fire shells if the South had shown a little more flexibility about fishing rights for North Koreans.
As the 2012 election year approaches, the Grand National Party is under mounting pressure to pull back from the hostile position that Lee publicly espoused. The party faces the risk of losing seats in the National Assembly and then losing the presidential election if the government fails to soften its stance during the campaign.
How soft, however, can South Korea go? One thing is sure: South Korea is not going to relent the seemingly tough policy of the Lee government if North Korea stages another “incident”, tests a lot of missiles or conducts a third underground nuclear test.
North Korean rhetoric goes on unabated, but the North gives the impression of wanting to ease tensions while getting ready for the big bash marking the 100th anniversary next April of the birth of Kim Jong-Il’s long-ruling father, Kim Il-Sung. North Korea has its hand out for donations of food and medicine from anyone and everyone, and has already b
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