[Reporter’s Notebook] Mixed public response to unified Korean hockey team shows how perception of North Korea has changed

Buses carrying the North Korean advance inspection team, including Samjiyon performance group director Hyon Song-wol, cross the Unification Bridge into South Korea at Paju, Gyeonggi Province on Jan. 21. (by Kim Seong-gwang, staff photographer)

President Moon likely failed to predict the controversy that would erupt when he first proposed the idea

The fielding of a unified Korean women’s hockey team at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics has been a matter of no small controversy. Amid an intense outpouring of opinion on social media and online, a Blue House “citizens’ petition” posted on Jan. 12 had more than 46,000 signatories as of the afternoon of Jan. 21. Their rationale for opposing the team can be boiled down to a belief that it is unfair for athletes who worked to participate in the Olympics to be sacrificed on behalf of North Korean athletes who were not originally eligible. Some have also voiced concerns about the team’s reduced cohesion.

The administration has expressed consternation over the complaints and appealed for understanding within the broader framework of the “Peace Olympics.” As the furor grew, a senior Blue House official explained to reporters on Jan. 18 that the Korean Peninsula “is experiencing some a very happy situation and atmosphere now compared to when there was the threat of war.”

“I would like it if people looked at the larger ‘forest’ here, which is that we’re heading toward the ‘Peace Olympics’ we were hoping for and discussing participation by North Korea, which seemed unthinkable in the past,” the official said.

Surveys by different polling outlets show large differences in views on the unified team. On Jan. 11, SBS reported an overwhelming majority of South Korean saying a unified team should be “fielded if possible,” citing survey findings showing 72.2% of respondents arguing that there was “no need to go overboard” on the issue. But a Jan. 17 online survey by Dailian showed relatively even levels of 44.1% support for the unified team and 42.5% opposition to it.

With such a large discrepancy, the findings alone provide a poor predictor of future opinion trends – but they do provide a clear indication that the situation is vastly different from the hopes and encouragement that met the unified teams fielded in 1991 at the World Table Tennis Championships and FIFA World Youth Championship. It’s also a situation President Moon Jae-in very likely failed to predict when he first proposed North Korea’s participation in the Olympics and the fielding of a unified team at an opening ceremony for the World Taekwondo Championships in Muju last June.

Citizens wave to a bus carrying members of the North Korean advance team at Gangneung Station on Jan. 21. (by Park Soo-hyuk, Gangwon correspondent)

In fact, discussions toward unified South and North Korean teams have taken place a number of times since 1991 – none of them successful. Even amid favorable conditions in inter-Korean relations under the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations, the two sides failed to reach agreements on how athletes would be selected. In that sense, the recent unified team decision is a historic and hard-won achievement.

A number of factors account for the negative response to the unified team. But perhaps one of the most crucial is the intense souring of South Korean opinion toward the North amid the antagonisms and conflicts of the past ten years. The negative trends in public opinion are apparent in indicators: a 2016 survey of unification perceptions carried out by the Seoul National University Institute for Peace and Unification Studies showed the percentage of South Koreans viewing the North as a “partner in negotiation” declining from 56.6% to 43.7% between 2007 and 2016, while the percentage viewing it as a “subject of antagonisms” rising from 6.6% to 14.8%. With the latest furor, the South Korean government does appear vulnerable to criticisms that it brought the controversy upon itself by failing to give careful condition to this change in attitudes.

In any case, the unified women’s hockey team is now set for an official inauguration after discussions by the South and North Korean National Olympic Committees and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) concluded without incident on Jan. 20. The Moon administration’s vision of using the Pyeongchang Olympics as a stepping stone toward improved inter-Korean relations also appears to be in motion.

But the road ahead is a long one. While the climate behind the two unified team decisions made during the Cold War’s final stages in 1991 led to the two sides’ adoption of a Basic Agreement later that year and a halt to the Team Spirit joint military exercises by South Korea and the US the following year, the mood evaporated in 1993 with the first North Korean nuclear crisis. It’s a precedent that may yet repeat itself without a vision to predict and realize future possibilities after this sports-related exchange is over.

By Park Byong-su, senior staff writer

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