Though South Korean president Moon Jae-in is hailing the agreement as a significant achievement in his bid to bring peace on the Korean peninsula, it isn’t something that all of South Korea can get behind. Another agreement, the decision to field a joint South-North Korean women’s hockey team at the games, has also been met with mixed reactions, not least from the South Korean female hockey players themselves. On Saturday (Jan. 20), the Koreas will meet International Olympic Committee officials in Switzerland to hammer out the details, including about the flags they’ll carry. [...]
Discussions for a joint North-South Korean sports team had been taking place since the 1960s. Officials from the two sides met in the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong on May 17, 1963 to discuss competing in the Olympics as one nation for the first time since the division of the peninsula. However, the negotiations failed to come to fruition (pdf, p.6). [...]
However, ahead of the 1990 Asian Games in Beijing, representatives from the two Koreas came up with what is now referred to as the Korean unification flag, which features a blue illustration of the Korean peninsula over a white background. Even though the efforts to create a united Korean team for those games were not realized, the first-ever joint cheering team (pdf, p.9) appeared during those games. [...]
This time, it’s also clear that many in South Korea are not on board with the decision for their athletes to jointly compete with North Korea and march under a unified flag. With the Winter Olympics just three weeks away, a recent poll showed only four out of 10 South Koreans are in favor of using the unification flag. Opposition was especially strong among conservative South Koreans, with 68.5% of conservatives polled opposing the use of the flag.
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