Games of hope
Alight sheeting of snow covered the schoolyard while the handheld Unified Korean Peninsula flags, which have become de rigueur at this Olympics, backed by an icy wind, flew with purpose.
Standing watching the now infamous North Korean cheerleading troupe and a lesser known Brass Band from beyond the very hard Korean border was mostly an older crowd alongside young parents with children and a keen eye for history.
Behind me over a fence and across a small road, the Olympics Medals Stage was occupied by a KPop band which was being met with loud approval by local teenagers. When the Brass section from the Democratic Peoples Republic would stop to take a breather, the wind would carry the K-Pop the short distance. If you were being lazy it would be easy to use it as a metaphor of your choosing.
This Winter Olympics though has been laden with metaphors and symbolism.
The opening night kicked off with the Trump Regime’s second in command — Mike Pence, refusing to stand and acknowledge the unified Korean team when they made their way out into the stadium for the opening ceremony. The irony apparently lost on Pence was the parallels that could be drawn between his action and the NFL footballers ‘taking a knee’ during the US national anthem to highlight police brutality against African-Americans. The latter act has been roundly condemned by the Trump Regime for bringing politics into sport.
As the opening days skated by, Pence and the American diplomats present were involved in more awkwardness this time involving one of their own athletes; figure skater Adam Rippon. The first openly gay athlete to qualify for Team USA.
Before departing for Korea, Rippon was asked his opinion of Pence.
“You mean Mike Pence, the same Mike Pence that funded gay conversion therapy? I’m not buying it.”
As Rippon became one of the stars of the games a war of words erupted between the figure skater and the arch conservative.
This was all in stark contrast to the charm offensive being put on by the North Koreans, with local Korean media going into overdrive analysing every hand and eye movement made by the high level DPRK delegation, led by Kim Yo-Jong, the sister of the ruling dictator.
Watching the — again highly symbolic — Unified Korea versus Japan women’s ice hockey game in a downtown bar not far from the venue none of the Koreans present offered anything but positivity about the rapprochement that had been brought about by the games.
The familiar refrain when the question of the North was brought up that night was ‘we are one people’ with some suggesting unity within the next decade, though by then the game was in its last quarter and we had been heavily indulging in Soju!
When US/South Korean war games kick off again in a post Olympics environment all this hope could quickly be dashed but, from what I’ve witnessed, Koreans — south of the border, want peace and an end to being used as a proxy in the great games of foreign powers.
It’s hard to watch the Olympics without being cynical. When is a Russian not a Russian? At the Winter Olympics this has been a popular joke amongst hacks, commenting on the presence of the Olympic Athlete from Russia (OAR) contingent at the games.
However, the presence for the first time, of openly gay athletes, of a US women’s Ice Hockey team reaching the final only a year after taking strike action for better pay and conditions (sound familiar?) and the possibility that a genuine opportunity could emerge for steps towards Koreans sorting out their differences themselves, has for me made this a successful games.
The political manoeuvring beats watching Curling any day.
By Kevin Brannigan in Korea
