North Korea is to send its athletes to the Winter Olympics in the South next month, the rivals said yesterday after their first formal talks in more than two years.
The two sides also decided to hold military talks to ease tensions and to restore a military hotline closed since February 2016.
Seoul and Olympic organizers have been keen for Pyongyang — which boycotted the 1988 Seoul Summer Games — to take part in what they repeatedly proclaimed a “peace Olympics” in Pyeongchang.
Photo: AP / Yonhap
“The North Korean side will dispatch a National Olympic Committee delegation, athletes, cheerleaders, art performers’ squad, spectators, a taekwondo demonstration team and a press corps, and the South will provide necessary amenities and facilities,” they said in a joint statement.
Yesterday’s talks were held in Panmunjom, the truce village in the Demilitarized Zone.
The North’s delegation walked over the Military Demarcation Line marking the border to the Peace House venue on the southern side, just meters from where a defector ran across in a hail of bullets two months ago.
Looking businesslike, the South Korean Minister of Unification Cho Myoung-gyon and the North’s chief delegate, Ri Son-gwon, shook hands at the entrance to the building and again across the negotiating table.
“Let’s present the people with a precious new year’s gift,” Ri said. “There is a saying that a journey taken by two lasts longer than the one traveled alone.”
The atmosphere was friendlier than at past meetings, and Cho told Ri: “The people have a strong desire to see the North and South move toward peace and reconciliation.”
However, there was no mention in the joint statement of a proposal by Seoul to resume reunions of families left divided by the Korean War, or of an offer by the North to send a high-level delegation to the Games.
Only two athletes from the North have qualified for the Games so far, but hundreds of young female North Korean cheerleaders have created a buzz at three previous international sporting events in the South.
The group might stay on a cruise ship in Sokcho, about an hour’s drive from the Olympic venue.
According to South Korean reports, any high-level delegation accompanying the team could include North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s younger sister, Yo-jong, who is a senior member of the ruling Workers’ Party.
Both sides expressed the desire to address wider questions, but Pyongyang has snubbed previous attempts by Seoul to set up further family reunions, saying it would not do so unless several of its citizens are returned by the South.
“The South and the North agreed to activate cross-border contacts, passages, exchanges and cooperation, and to seek national reconciliation and unity in various sectors,” the statement said, without giving details.
It was unclear when the proposed military talks — which would be the first of their kind since 2014 — would be held.
“The two sides will reach a smooth agreement on Pyeongchang, but what happens afterward?” Dongguk University professor Koh Yu-hwan said before the announcement. “In terms of pending issues regarding the improvement of inter-Korean ties, it won’t be easy to immediately reach an agreement.”
Japan has deployed long-range missiles in a southwestern region near China, the Japanese defense minister said yesterday, at a time when ties with Beijing are at their lowest in recent years. The missiles were installed in Kumamoto in the southern region of Kyushu, as Japan is attempting to shore up its military capacity as China steps up naval activity in the East China Sea. “Standoff defense capabilities enable us to counter the threat of enemy forces attempting to invade our country ... while ensuring the safety of our personnel,” Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. “This is an extremely important initiative for
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
RSS