The Two Koreas and the Politics of Global Sport [1 ed.] 9789004233409, 9789004233393

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The Two Koreas and the Politics of Global Sport

The Two Koreas and the Politics of Global Sport By

Brian Bridges

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2012

Cover illustration: Pak Jung Chul, left, North Korea’s Judo coach, and Chung Eun-Sun, right, a South Korean basketball player, carry a flag representing a united Korea into Olympic Stadium during the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics Friday, Sept. 15, 2000 in Sydney (AP Photo/Rusty Kennedy/2000). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bridges, Brian, 1948 The two Koreas and the politics of global sport / by Brian Bridges.   p. cm.  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 978-90-04-23339-3 1. Sports--Korea (South) 2. Sports--Korea (North) 3. Sports and globalization. 4. Nationalism and sports. 5. Korea (South)--Politics and government. 6. Korea (North)--Politics and government. 7. Korea (South)--Social life and customs. 8. Korea (North)--Social life and customs. I. Title.  GV663.K6B75 2012  796.09519--dc23 2012026448

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.nl/brill-typeface. ISBN 978 90 04 23339 3 (hardback) ISBN 978 90 04 23340 9 (e-book) Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

In memory of my father and mother, who in their own special ways taught me to love sport and learn about Asia

CONTENTS Acknowledgements...................................................................................................ix    1. Introduction..........................................................................................................1   2. Sport, Nationalism and International Relations.........................................7   3. Tradition, Colonialism and New Statehood in Korea............................. 23      3.1.  Arrival of Western Sports...................................................................... 24     3.2.  Japanese Colonial Period...................................................................... 25     3.3.  After 1945................................................................................................... 29     3.4.  The Korean War...................................................................................... 32     3.5.  Sports Development in South Korea................................................. 34     3.6.  Sports Development in North Korea................................................. 39   4. Into the International Arena......................................................................... 47      4.1.  Joining the IOC........................................................................................ 47     4.2.  The 1966 World Cup............................................................................... 55     4.3.  Inter-Korean sporting contacts........................................................... 58   5. The Seoul Olympics......................................................................................... 65      5.1.  The Road to the Seoul Olympics........................................................ 66     5.2.  Economic Costs and Benefits.............................................................. 69     5.3.  Socio-Cultural Legacies......................................................................... 71     5.4.  Politico-Diplomatic Breakthroughs................................................... 74     5.5.  The North Korean Dimension............................................................. 78     5.6.  Enduring Legacies.................................................................................. 82   6. Reaction and Reconciliation......................................................................... 85      6.1.  Coping with Global Change................................................................ 85     6.2.  The Nervous 1990s.................................................................................. 88     6.3.  Rays of Sunshine..................................................................................... 94   7. Cooling Down..................................................................................................109      7.1.  The Road to Beijing..............................................................................109     7.2.  Football Fall-Out...................................................................................115     7.3.  Northern Reminders............................................................................118

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    7.4.  Pyeongchang Victory...........................................................................122     7.5.  Succession in the North......................................................................125   8. Sporting Systems Today................................................................................129      8.1.  The North Korean Model...................................................................129     8.2.  The South Korean System..................................................................134   9. Lessons From Other Divided Nations.......................................................141      9.1.  Two Germanies.....................................................................................142     9.2.  The Two Yemens...................................................................................143     9.3.  Two Vietnams........................................................................................145     9.4. China-Taiwan.........................................................................................146     9.5.  The Sporting Dimensions...................................................................147           9.5.1. Germany......................................................................................147         9.5.2. Yemen...........................................................................................150         9.5.3. Vietnam.......................................................................................152         9.5.4. China-Taiwan.............................................................................153     9.6. Lessons to be Learnt?...........................................................................156 10. Conclusion........................................................................................................159 Appendix..................................................................................................................169 Bibliography............................................................................................................171 Index..........................................................................................................................183

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Sport has always been an important part of my life, even though at a relatively early age I had to face the reality that I was never going to play for England at cricket. Having been interested in Korean politics and foreign policy for some while, it was reading Richard Pound’s classic insider account of the complex negotiations between the Olympic officials of the two Koreas and the International Olympic Committee in the run up to the 1988 Seoul Olympics that first led me to consider seriously the linkages between sports and politics and the particular poignancy of this nexus in the case of the two Koreas. Many people, inside and outside of the Korean peninsula, have provided insights, information, and feedback both on inter-Korean relations in general and on sporting aspects in particular. Some have wished to remain anonymous, but I would like to thank particularly Cho Ji-hyun, Cho Nam-ki, Sandra Collins, Aidan Foster-Carter, Vassil Girginov, Jim Hoare, Kim Sang-woo, Kobashi Yasuaki, Koh Eunha, Lee Jung-hoon, Lee Jung-woo, Paul Lu Zhouxiang, John MacAloon, Nagano Shinichiro, Ok Gwang, Park Jin, Richard Pound, Barton Starr, Suzuoki Takabumi, Tahara Junko, Martin Uden and Usami Yoshiaki. Diplomats and officials from both Koreas have been generous with their time as have officials of the South Korean National Olympic Committee. Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful, despite several requests, in being able to interview North Korean Olympic officials. I am indebted to the staff of several libraries and archives: my own Lingnan University librarians who have patiently borne my requests for inter-library loans; the library staff of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (London), especially Ms Mary Bone; the archivists at the National Archives at Kew (London), the National Postal Museum (London), the Gaimusho Gaiko Shiryokan (Tokyo), the Prince Chichibu Memorial Sports Museum Library (Tokyo) and, above all, Ms Ruth BeckPerrenoud and her colleagues at the Olympic Studies Centre in Lausanne, Switzerland. At Brill and Global Oriental, I would like to thank both Paul Norbury and Nozomi Goto for their faith in this project and also thank the anonymous reviewer whose constructive thoughts have hopefully made this a better book.

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I have two other particular debts that I wish to acknowledge. One is to J.A. ‘Tony’ Mangan, who first introduced me into the academic world of sports studies and has never ceased to encourage me to push forward in my studies of Korean sport in particular. The other is to the ‘Lingnan family’: colleagues across the campus, especially my two co-teachers Annie Chan and Paul Whitla who have helped with developing a course on sport for social science students (at the time the only such course in a Hong Kong tertiary institution), and other colleagues such as Peter Baehr and David Phillips who have encouraged me to write this book. Various cohorts of students have both amiably put up with my tendency to revert to Korean examples and yet at the same time forced me to think about the underlying realities of those very examples. Hong Kong in many ways has proved to be a particularly fortuitous vantage point from which to write this book, given that since 1997 Hong Kong has had a particularly unusual position in global sport being separately represented in all global sporting organizations, including the IOC and FIFA, yet at the same time being politically a special administrative region within a larger political entity, the People’s Republic of China. Under ‘one country, two systems’ Hong Kong’s own ‘nationalism’ or ‘patriotism’ remains a contested concept. Some material which now appears in Chapters 4 and 5 in a revised form did originally appear in articles in The International Journal of the History of Sport in October 2007 and December 2008 respectively (Routledge/ Taylor and Francis). Some material which now appears in Chapter 7 in a revised form did originally appear in a chapter in Korea Yearbook. Volume 3. Politics, Economy and Society 2009 (Brill). Full citations are included in the Bibliography. Last but not least I wish to show my appreciation to my family, Siew Bee, Sarah and Colin, for their patience and understanding while I have been distracted by this project. Brian Bridges Hong Kong April 2012

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION The summer of 1966 was a heady one for a sport-loving British teenager, culminating in the euphoria of England’s football World Cup victory. But one of the other stories of those July weeks which still impinges on my memory is the performance of the North Korean team – underdogs in a way which so appeals to the British mentality. Pak Doo Ik, scorer of the legendary goal that defeated mighty Italy, was perhaps the fijirst Korean name that became really familiar to me. The political ramifijications of his playing for a team from a country not recognized diplomatically by Britain passed me by at the time, but the memory remained as I later turned to studying Korea in more detail. My fijirst experience of sport in Korea came two decades later on my fijirst ever visit to Seoul in 1985. Wandering around the back-streets on a Saturday afternoon I was puzzled to see the streets emptying until almost completely deserted, but the bars and restaurants full to overflowing. The reason: South Korea was playing Japan in a football World Cup qualifying match and everyone wanted to watch wherever a television was available. The Koreans got the result they wanted and celebrations went on long into the night, but it was not just winning, it was winning against Japan, the former colonial power, that was so important. This volume examines the development of sport as well as the interKorean interactions in both the national and global sporting arenas from the time of the formal creation of both the Republic of Korea (hereafter South Korea) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (hereafter North Korea) in 1948 through to the present day. Against the background of the broader linkages between sport, politics, nationalism and international relations, as well as the more specifijic dynamics of the inter-Korean political relationship, the following chapters will discuss in a broadly chronological sequence (though there are certain thematic exceptions at times) the historical development of sport in Korea before division, the motivations behind and the results of sports policy development in the post-1948 years, the importance attached by both Koreas to projecting sporting prowess and national images onto a global stage, the impact of the Seoul Olympics, the faltering attempts since the 1990s to create intraKorean sporting linkages, and the inter-Korean rivalry – and much more

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limited cooperation – in international sporting competitions throughout the years right up to 2012. Despite the ideal that ‘sport has nothing to do with politics’, there is little doubt that the two are closely linked. Apart from trying to promote health, education and economic policies, governments around the world have also tried to promote, manipulate or interfere in sport for a variety of political purposes, for domestic popularity or for international exposure and image-branding. For both the governments of divided nations, which by their very rationale are involved in a highly-charged competition for legitimacy with their other ‘part-nation’, and the citizens of those divided nations, the Olympics, the World Cup and other major international sporting events inevitably became arenas for persistent political posturing and manoeuvring. As the following chapters will show, the two Koreas have certainly seen sport as a continuing and viable means of asserting – and occasionally, albeit briefly, compromising on – their competitive relationship in so many other aspects. Chapter 2 reviews the literature and summarizes the debates about sport’s inter-connections with politics, nationalism and international relations. While recognizing that sport can perform a number of political, economic and socio-cultural functions in society this chapter argues that there is indeed a close inter-connection between sport and politics. The chapter also considers sport’s role in forging national identity and the ways in which it is utilized, both positively and negatively, as an instrument of nationalism, as well as examining how far the ideals of sport as positively contributing to international peace and stability are reflected in the reality of how sport promotes or hinders international reconciliation. Chapter 3 traces the historical development of sports in Korea, from traditional games to the arrival of ‘modern’ sport from the West in the nineteenth century. After examining the linkages between sport, religion, and nationalism in the late nineteenth-early twentieth century, the impact of the period of Japanese colonial rule and the influence of ‘Japanese’ sports is discussed. The chapter charts the embryonic attempts to create sporting activities post-1945 despite the socio-economic distress and political manoeuvring in both Koreas in the years up to the formal establishment of the two separate states in 1948. After discussing the causes, course and impact of the Korean War on the political systems and peoples of both Koreas, there follows a comparative perspective on the post-Korean War development of domestic sports policies in the two Koreas. It shows that in the South sport was a relatively low priority under the Syngman Rhee government, but that Park Chung-hee, after taking power by military coup,

introduction

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had a strong and profound influence on sports development, which he saw as contributing to the creation of a strong and ultimately unifijied nation. In the North too, sporting activity became an important part of nation-building, societal mobilization and development; the juche philosphy of Kim Il Sung is analysed and Kim Il Sung’s views on sport clarifijied. Chapter 4 focuses more on the external dimensions from the 1950s to late 1970s of both states’ sport policies; in particular the positions, policies and attitudes of the two Koreas towards the Olympic movement and the football World Cup. While noting that neither Korea made a major impact on the Olympics in medal terms in the early decades, the North’s almost legendary exploits in the 1966 football World Cup are discussed. This chapter also demonstrates that the essentially propagandistic nature of the competition between the two political systems was mirrored by the lack of genuine bilateral sporting interactions. The major breakthrough in political relations between North and South in 1971–72 did stimulate hopes of sporting cooperation, but these were as short-lived as were the political dialogues. The Seoul Olympics are the focus of Chapter 5, which sets the hosting bid, the preparations and the immediate legacies of the Seoul Olympics against the aspirations of both Koreas in the mid-to-late 1980s. The North initially criticized the choice of Seoul and then tried to argue for cohosting; the convoluted but ultimately abortive talks over possible cohosting involving the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the two Koreas are discussed. Three broad categories are used to analyse the impact and legacies of the 1988 Olympics on South Korea. It is argued that the economic, infrastructural and technological benefijits were long-lasting and mostly positive; that the socio-cultural legacies were more intangible and more contradictory; and the political benefijits were surprisingly benefijicial, contributing in some measure to the democratization of South Korea and substantially to the establishment of the South’s diplomatic relations with East European states, the Soviet Union and fijinally China. But the Seoul Olympics did not improve North-South relations and the North reacted badly to the Olympic successes and to the South’s successful effforts to promote ‘northern diplomacy’ with its allies, while it was also itself shocked by the political changes taking place in Eastern Europe with the end of the Cold War. Chapters 6 and 7 analyse the changes on the Korean peninsula during the 1990s and 2000s. Initial optimism about another political breakthrough in North-South relations in 1990-91 was soon to be dissipated by the fijirst crisis over suspected North Korean nuclear weapon development. Sports

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talks, reconvened in line with the political dialogue, did result in the fijirst ever joint Korean teams for international competitions, in 1991, but they proved to be ‘one-offf’ events. The 1990s saw an important political transition in the North with the death of Kim Il Sung, but, at the same time, increasingly severe economic problems domestically as well as international criticism over its nuclear ambitions. Inter-Korean sporting contacts efffectively ceased for most of the 1990s, but the dynamics of North-South relations were to be drastically changed by the advent of the ‘sunshine policy’ of South Korean President Kim Dae-jung. His historic Summit meeting with Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang in 2000 started offf various dimensions of dialogue and interaction, which in turn led to the emotional joint Korean team entry into the Sydney 2000 Olympics opening ceremony. Moreover, although the various inter-Korean dialogues that tried to build on this new mood ultimately foundered on controversy over the second nuclear crisis that began in 2002, inter-Korean sporting contacts continued beyond the political impasse through to 2006. Although a second inter-Korean Summit was held in 2007, a presidential power transition in the South brought about a reconsideration of policies towards the North while the nuclear crisis remained unsolved. Chapter 7 analyses the reasons for inter-Korean sporting links going backwards as the two sides failed to agree on cooperation at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and in subsequent regional and international sporting events. While unable to compete head-on with the South’s greater fijinancial and sporting prowess, success in sporting events remained important to the North’s leadership. This chapter reviews recent developments up to and including the South’s successful bid for the 2018 Winter Olympics as well as examining the possible implications of the political transition in North Korea with the death of Kim Jong Il and the succession of his son. Chapter 8 examines the contemporary sports policy structures and the  domestic political and commercial influences on those systems. Both Koreas then have developed sporting systems which endeavour to create internationally-successful athletes, but there are signifijicant diffferences in ideological background, institutional structures and degrees of commercialization. Chapter 9 offfers comparative case studies of the inter-connections between sporting and political competition in other cases of divided nations. The cases of Germany, Yemen and Vietnam will be considered as examples of previously divided nations which have now become unifijied, respectively by absorption, negotiation and military force. The existing case of China and Taiwan will also be highlighted as another example

introduction

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where both sides still claim to be the legitimate power. These examples demonstrate that sport has not been a primary factor in improving interstate relations or facilitating reunifijication in the cases of divided nations, even in the case of the much-quoted German experience. The relative lack of pointers for suggesting how the Korean situation might be resolved and whether sport can play any useful role in bringing about reconciliation and reunifijication between divided nations is noted. Chapter 10 draws out this study’s main fijindings. The starting point is that despite a long history of unity, cultural afffijinity, and homogeneity amongst the Koreans, the post-1945 division of Korea has created two new political cultures which are at least in some crucial respects incongruent with these memories and traditions. Through reviewing the history of inter-Korean political and sporting interactions over more than six decades, this chapter attempts to answer the question of whether sporting contacts help to positively improve inter-Korean relations or whether sport is being held hostage to the ups and downs of inter-Korean political relations. Both Koreas have devoted considerable resources to developing sporting systems and securing sporting achievement since the 1960s. Both in the South and the North, governments have seen sport as a means to mobilize their peoples for ‘national’ goals such as social stability, health welfare, and economic development. But, for both states, international sporting success has also had important ramifijications in terms of both national pride and inter-Korean rivalry. So, in the context of inter-Korean relations, what is the relationship between sports dialogue and cooperation and the so-called political ‘breakthroughs’ and vicissitudes of interKorean political relations? Although use has been made of a number of archives in diffferent parts of the world, it has not been possible to consult the relevant sporting or diplomatic archives of the two main protagonists, North and South Korea. In the South’s case this can be compensated for by utilization of a wide range of academic and media articles, journals, and other sources which are available in English, as well as use of Japanese- and occasional Koreanlanguage sources. For the North, relevant materials are much more difffijicult to obtain, but the works and speeches of both Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il as well as analysis of pronouncements by diffferent administrative organs through the media do provide important key indicators of policy directions. In general, the intention has been to survey speeches and statements by policy elites, sports offfijicials and opinion leaders in both Koreas by drawing on offfijicial documents and histories, newspapers, internet sources and other printed materials to supplement a wide range of

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academic publications and analyses. Interviews with Olympic and other sporting offfijicials, diplomats, academics and journalists have provided important insights as well as relevant background material. Generally Korean names and terms are transliterated according to the McCune-Reischauer system, although exceptions are made for politicians and other prominent fijigures that have well-established but diffferent methods of romanization. East Asian names are normally written with the surname fijirst and that practice has been followed here, except for certain well-known exceptions, such as Syngman Rhee, or when scholars and others write their names in the Western order in publications.

CHAPTER TWO

SPORT, NATIONALISM AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Sport does, of course, mean diffferent things to diffferent people and its meaning has, moreover, changed over historical time. The Oxford English Dictionary defijines sport as: ‘an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment’. In one of the pioneering volumes on sport and politics, Lincoln Allison goes into more detail: ‘an institutionalized competitive activity that involves vigorous physical exertion or the use of relatively complex physical skills by individuals whose participation is motivated by a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic factors…it is played under standardized conditions with strict limits of time and space’ (Allison 1986 as cited in Cha 2009: 1). However, as one textbook of sports studies, in eschewing any ‘simple essentialist’ defijinition of sport, argues: ‘An historical and sociological understanding of sport makes it clear that “sport” has no such fijixed meaning’ (Horne at al. 1999: xiv). Nonetheless, whatever defijinition or non-defijinition is used, it is clear that sport has become an important part of contemporary society and culture around the world. Globalization has become a contemporary buzzword, taking on a myriad of meanings, both positive and negative. Sport has inevitably been linked with, and become representative of, contemporary globalization. Sport’s development and spread around the world, though primarily from West to the rest of the world historically, has become increasingly multidirectional with reverse flows from the rest of the world to the West. Figurational sociologists have frequently employed the term ‘sportization’ to describe the various phases historically by which sport became a global phenomenon through the spread and mingling of diffferent sporting and cultural traditions across the globe. Drawing on this work, Joseph Maguire has posited fijive phases of sportization: seventeenth and eighteenth century conversions of traditional pastimes into ‘modern’ sports; the nineteenth century emergence of new sports; late nineteenth-early twentieth century spread of ‘British’ and ‘European’ sports forms within Europe and out to the Empire and beyond; from the 1920s to the 1960s a ‘struggle for hegemony’ between European sports, new American sports and traditional sports in other parts of the world; and since the 1960s the increased

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global presence of non-Western sports and non-Western entry into positions of power within global sporting organizations (Maguire 1994). Joseph Maguire is careful to set out the ‘accelerating commingling process occurring between sporting cultures’ (e.g. ‘Eastern martial arts as well as a range of folk games are difffusing into and around the Western core’) in recent decades (Maguire 1994: 408–409). Nonetheless, some other scholars, such as Ben Carrington, have criticized what they see primarily as ‘Eurocentric difffusionist thought and logic’ being applied to sports history (Carrington 2010: 36–46). Certainly, it should not be ignored that thriving physical exercise cultures and sporting cultures did exist in other parts of the world long before the Europeans arrived. Chinese sports scholars can fijind evidence of references to physical exercise and games in the writings of Confucius and Mencius more than two thousand years ago, to take only one example (Xu 2008: 13–15). As will be discussed further in the next chapter too, the Korean peninsula also had its own sporting activities well before the ‘West’ arrived on its shores. Sport seems to be everywhere. Global viewing fijigures through conventional television (without counting new media sources such as the internet) that reach, for example, 4.7 billion viewers for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and probably cumulatively over 20 billion for the 2010 Football World Cup Finals in South Africa attest to the global interest in sport. As Ian Henry has argued: ‘Sport is thus a signifijicant indicator of global cultural trends’ (Henry 2007: 3). While sport may well have been originally intended as a form of leisure diversion, there is little doubt that nowadays, as cross-cultural educationalist Eugene Eoyang has argued, ‘sports, in every sense of the word, is a serious business’ (Eoyang 2002: 206). Thus, deploying one of Eoyang’s meanings, sport can be an important global economic contributor, as sporting mega-events and sporting success bring in spectators, media publicity and commercial sponsorship as well as stimulating the burgeoning sports equipment and clothing markets. Particularly in the closing decades of the twentieth century and the fijirst decade of the twenty-fijirst century this ‘commodifijication’ (consuming) of sports has become increasingly pronounced. In 2010, the value of the entire sports industry in the United States alone was estimated at being worth US$ 414 billion; Manchester United and Real Madrid each sell well over a million football shirts a year around the world; more than 400 million NBA products were sold in over 20,000 retail locations throughout China in 2006 alone (Plunkett Research 2010; sportingintelligence .com 2010; nba.com 2007). Sport looms large in the global media, with

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seemingly ever-increasing numbers of dedicated sports channels, sports magazines and coverage of major sporting leagues and sporting megaevents flooding the air waves, print media and the ‘new’ internet media. Sports stars – and their sometimes sensational life-styles – can rapidly become household names and front-page as well as back-page news. As John Horne and his colleagues argue, the media actually plays ‘an active role in the process of boundary marking, and boundary shifting’ whereby, for example, competitive team games become dominant, ‘new’ sports emerge, and certain sports (e.g. cruel sports) become residual (Horne et al. 1999: 161). At the same time, technological advances enable us to watch – and blog about – live sporting performances from around the globe, seemingly regardless of time and space. Finally, sport has contributed to political globalization in the way that successive host cities and countries endeavour to promote their own political values, images and even political systems through either prowess on the sporting fijields or hosting sporting mega-events, while, at the same time, those states are being exposed to outside influences and ideas through that same process of sporting participation. Therefore, sport has become a major element in world society and culture: ‘Competitive, organized sport…..has become a universal activity involving the participation and emotional commitment of hundreds of millions of people’ (Taylor 1986: 35). Or, to use the phraseology of Steven Jackson and Stephen Haigh: ‘sport is increasingly and inextricably linked to a multidimensional matrix of cultural, economic, environmental and political spheres in contemporary social life’ (Jackson and Haigh 2009: 4). Yet, in tandem with the globalizing influences incoming and outward flowing, sport is strongly associated with promoting and being promoted  by national identity and nationalism and as such can play an important, sometimes even catalytic, role in the domestic politics and social order of states. Despite the various traumas affflicting the international political  and fijinancial systems, the competing visions of a new world order, and the expansion of transnational organizations in the past few decades, the nation-state remains a potent and important political unit to which both leaders and citizens continue to relate. At the domestic national level, consequently, sport can perform a number of political, economic and socio-cultural functions: it can contribute to people’s health, create jobs and business activities, forge social integration or cohesion, enhance nation-building and national prestige, or even act as a means to divert public attention away from political or socio-economic problems

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(Girginov and Parry 2005; Houlihan 2000; Cha 2009).1 Externally, sport can help to project national images, convey messages of protest or support, alleviate or stimulate rivalry and conflict, promote peace and goodwill, and send messages to allies and enemies (Cha 2009: 7–22). This chapter, therefore, discusses the literature on the inter-connections between politics and sport, between sport and nationalism/national identity, and between sport and international relations. One long-serving IOC President, Avery Brundage, consistently argued that ‘politics and sport should not mix’ even though political realities during his period in offfijice (1952–1972) made that an impossible dream, and as Victor Cha has tellingly noted, his most famous exposition of that belief was ironically made in an essentially ‘political’ statement justifying the decision to allow the Nazi regime to host the 1936 Olympics (Cha 2009: 7). One of the most senior and high profijile of recent IOC offfijicials, Richard Pound, has more realistically argued: ‘In practice, it is evident that sport and politics do indeed mix, at many diffferent levels. For the most part, the mix is successful and is essential, in many parts of the world, if there is to be any organized sport at all’ (Pound 1994: 25, 50). Christopher Hill notes that although the IOC, for example, did not seek political involvement, it ‘has had it thrust upon it’. Although the IOC believed, and, indeed, still professes that political questions should be settled by politicians, its leaders have been ‘obliged to act politically’ (Hill 1996: 36). Another IOC President, in offfijice during the 1970s, Lord Killanin, later recalled: ‘Ninetyfijive percent of my problems as president of the IOC involved national and international politics’ (Killanin 1983: 2; Senn 1999: x). Politics is fundamentally about power: the capacity of a group or an individual to command or influence the behaviour of others and to control the distribution of resources. Sport does provide politically-usable resources. As such, sport, therefore, is intricately linked with dynamic power relations between governments, international and national sporting organizations, political parties, social groups, businesses and individuals. Taking the phraseology of Vassil Girginov and Jim Parry, sport is ‘inherently political because it involves political judgments, calculations

1 These various domestic dimensions were typifijied in a speech by a senior Malaysian representative, Datuk Wira Haji Idris, to the United Nations in October 2011: ‘Sport has a unique power to attract, mobilize and inspire…..Sport plays a signifijicant function as a promoter of social integration and economic development…..Sport is an influential instrument to strengthen social ties and networks’ (Idris 2011).

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and choices by public authorities about how to prioritize resources and expenditure’ (Girginov and Parry 2005: 166). Grant Jarvie, elaborating on the earlier work of Barrie Houlihan, argues that one key strand, or school of thought, in the existing literature on the politics-sport axis is ‘the use made by governments of sport and the process by which public policy is made and implemented’. Yet, Jarvie and Houlihan also draw attention to a second major school of thought: ‘the way in which sports organizations use power to pursue their own sectional interests at the expense of other social groups’ (Jarvie 2006: 66; see also Houlihan 2000). Although occasional reference will be made to the second approach (not least when considering domestic actors – organizations, political parties, even cities – that influence policy outcomes), this volume will be more concerned with the fijirst approach in trying to depict and analyse comparatively how and why the two Korean governments and other key policy-making actors have developed sports policies within their respective two countries and how they link, or de-link, these policies from the course of inter-Korean relations and broader international relationships. In examining in a comparative manner the range of governmental policy approaches to sports policy development and implementation across the global political spectrum, similarities may seem more obvious than diffferences, not least in a broadly shared belief in the functionalist benefijits of overflow from purely sports-related endeavours and in the ‘potential of attempting to harness sports to further their particular interests and values’ (Horne at al. 1999: 195). Barrie Houlihan, indeed, argues that in considering the role of the state in sport, ‘it is surprising how similar public policy outputs are irrespective of whether the state is authoritarian or democratic, afffluent or poor, or politically stable or volatile’ (Houlihan 2000: 215). In certain communist states, such as the former Soviet Union, a sports or ‘physical culture’ system evolved which not only succeeded in securing considerable athletic success in international competitions, but also, at the same time, was utilized ‘to promote health and hygiene, defence, productivity, and the integration of ethnically diverse peoples into a unifijied state’ (Riordan 1993: 36). The Soviet leaders had initially disparaged ‘bourgeois’ sport and even set up a Red Sport International organization to advance their own revolutionary agenda through communist sporting clubs in Europe, but from the mid-1930s the Soviet Union began to participate in various ad hoc sporting fijixtures with ‘capitalist’ teams and countries. Even though somewhat unsystematic, this tentative engagement with international sport was to pave the way for later post-war

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participation in FIFA and the Olympic movement (Peppard and Riordan 1993; Keys 2003). In the Cold-War-era Soviet Union all organized leisure activities, including sport, were designed ‘to create a socialist way of life that would erode social class and urban-rural diffferences, and which would be demonstrably superior to both the high culture and popular cultures of the capitalist West’ (Roberts 2010: 170). Certainly ‘state funding and control of sport within a planned economy……gave Soviet sport a distinctly diffferent character from its highly commercialized western counterpart’ (Keys 2003: 433). Similar was the system that developed in post-1949 China. Traditionally, sport – or even physical exercise – was not highly valued within Chinese society, but the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was determined to create a new identity for its people and the nation after 1949: ‘sporting success was a useful instrument for this purpose’ (Dong 2003: 28). A centralized sports administration was set up during the 1950s, initially drawing on advice and inspiration from the then existing Soviet models, resulting in the creation of a ‘coordinated network for athlete identifijication, testing and nurturing’ (Dong 2003: 216). Despite the disruptions of the Cultural Revolution, China’s emphasis on hard work and discipline for its elite athletes began to show results in the international arena from the 1980s. Yet, as Xu Guoqi has argued, ‘Chinese interest in sports and the Olympic Games in particular has more to do with the Chinese desire to be rich and strong, and to show the world that China is the equal of other nations, than with a love of the Games’ (Xu 2008: 68). As Barrie Houlihan has argued, for most countries around the world, public policy relating to sport is a ‘post-war concern’ and, ironically, the use of sport by the communist bloc actually acted as ‘a stimulus to the development of public policy towards sport in Western Europe and the major democracies’ (Houlihan 2000: 214–15). In the Western world, moreover, while the sports systems were/are more autonomous from government direction and less centralized than was the case in the Soviet Union, East Germany or China, and, therefore, arguably more difffijicult to categorize in terms of the governmental or elite motivations for promoting sport, the ‘West’ shared with its socialist rivals the belief in the positive spillover efffects of sporting endeavour into other aspects of life. The Nordic European states as well as the Netherlands, for example, have adopted an approach to the organization of sport which placed it fijirmly within their broader social welfare policies, with ‘a long history of democratic sports movements with their independence being protected by legislation’ (Jarvie 2006: 75).

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Some scholars have argued that sport in the United States reinforces a belief in dominant values, such as the so-called ‘American dream’ and ‘the pursuit of happiness’ (enshrined in the Declaration of Independence), and as such contributes to societal and even political stability (Nixon 2008: 336–7; Swanson and Spears 1995: 10–12). J.A. Mangan reminds us of the famous statement by Robert Kennedy in the early 1960s that ‘except for war, there is nothing in American life – nothing – which trains a boy better for life than sport’ (Mangan 2010: 476). One scholar, Terry Monnington, has written that ‘Sport in the USA is a major cultural practice; being a spectator or participant is perceived to be almost a duty’ (Monnington 1993: 127). However, while becoming a major component of American popular culture, sport in the United States to an extent not seen anywhere else in the world has also become ‘a professional sport model that celebrates profijit maximization and commercial objectives’ (Jarvie 2006: 158). David Andrews makes the same point: ‘over the past three decades or so, the major professional sports in the US have transformed themselves into multifaceted consumer entertainment complexes’ (Andrews 2009: 225). Undoubtedly, sport has played and continues to play an important role in the construction, inculcation and enhancement of national consciousness in many states, not least because, as Eric Hobsbawm has pointed out, ‘the imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people’ (Hobsbawm 1992: 143). Sport is ‘a uniquely efffective medium’ for difffusing and stimulating national feelings and stimulating national unity (Jarvie 1993: 74). As such, sport frequently seems a low-cost but highly visible way of integrating ethnic communities or, where history or religion might act as divisive cultural points of reference, creating ‘new’ national identities in emerging independent states (Houlihan 2000: 216). But, nationalism is also of course an expression of separateness against and frequently implies superiority to the Other – other nations. So, paradoxically, to use of the words of Joseph Maguire, sport ‘both extends emotional identifijication between members of diffferent societies and civilizations and, at the same time, fuels decivilizing counter thrusts’ (Maguire 2005:3). The same point is made from a cultural studies perspective by Arjun Appadurai, who argues that the modern nation-state can evoke feelings of ‘full attachment’ within its citizens, by which he means patriotism or loyalty, and thus provide a space for hatred of ‘others’ (Appadurai 2000: 130–1). Nationalism remains a slippery concept and one that changes and transforms itself. Mike Cronin, in writing about nationalism amongst the

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Irish (a nation which has actually been frequently compared to the Koreans), argues that ‘nationalism is not a single entity, it is multifaceted and can function at several levels’ – not just amongst the governing elite but also amongst the ‘people’ (Cronin 1999: 30–1). One way round this problem of defijinition in academic discourse has been to spawn a plethora of adjectives to qualify and categorize nationalism. Sports nationalism, or ‘sportive nationalism’ to use John Hoberman’s term, represents at its most basic level a desire to see a nation’s athletes excel in international competition, but clearly this can either be deliberately promoted by a political elite or be felt by citizens almost subconsciously without any special prompting from national leaders (Hoberman 1993: 16). In the context of sports nationalism, therefore, it may be helpful to utilize a distinction drawn from another milieu between state nationalism, ‘propounded at the elite level by politicians and leaders usually seeking to shore up their legitimacy by appealing to people’s patriotism’, and cultural nationalism, which can be seen as more ‘popular’ nationalism ‘driven by intellectuals, journalists, and writers’ and focusing on history, culture and national “values” ’ (Rose 2000: 171–2). State ‘sporting’ nationalism, then, is ‘top down’ and would imply deliberate and persistent effforts by governments to exercise power over and through sport so as to strengthen national identity and sustain domestic political support and legitimacy. Cultural or popular ‘sporting’ nationalism, on the other hand, is more ‘bottom up’ implying the ordinary public’s desire, fuelled by the media in many respects, to support and celebrate sporting success (or, on occasions, bemoan failure) and to identify with particular athletes or teams at the national level. The relevance of these two distinctions will be discussed later in the context of Korea. Nationalism of course links with national identity and, in the context of government policy-making, with what is now frequently being labelled as ‘nation branding’. Drawing on business marketing concepts, Keith Dinnie argues that nation branding is becoming an increasingly popular phenomenon though at the same time remaining a complex and politically controversial one. He defijines the nation-brand as ‘the unique, multidimensional blend of elements that provide the nation with culturally grounded diffferentiation and relevance for all of its target audiences’ (Dinnie 2008: 13–15). For certain states, sport can play a useful and, in a few cases such as Brazil for example, even a crucial role in projecting a national image – or brand – to the outside world. The founder of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, had a dream that sport would bring countries and their peoples closer together

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in situations supportive of and promoting peace and friendship. That strongly-rooted ‘idealistic internationalism’, to use Barrie Houlihan’s term, remains as an underpinning of the modern tenets of Olympism (Houlihan 1995: 3). Article 11 of UNESCO’s 1978 International Charter of Physical Education and Sport reads: ‘Through cooperation and the pursuit of mutual interests in the universal language of physical education and sport, all people will contribute to the preservation of lasting peace, mutual respect and friendship and will thus create a propitious climate for solving international problems’ (UNESCO 1978; Taylor 1986: 36–7). The Olympic Charter talks of ‘building a peaceful and better world’ and the Olympic movement’s current ‘peace through sport’ initiative sets out a vision of being able to ‘build a better world by promoting the Olympic Truce and using sport to forge friendship among the athletes, young people and communities’ (Girginov and Parry 2005: 4; Olympic.org website). In the view of Victor Peppard and James Riordan, ‘sport expresses its opposition to armed conflict…by actually providing and abstractly symbolizing the possibility of competition between states in a format that does not have lethal consequences for the participants’ (Peppard and Riordan 1993: 9). As such, sport is frequently depicted as a positive force in international relations, not just in preventing potential conflict but also acting as a means to bring states and their peoples closer together. Certainly there are examples in which sport and sports diplomacy justify such a positive gloss: the United States and Mao Zedong’s China developing political links through ‘ping-pong diplomacy’ in the early 1970s and Indian and Pakistani leaders becoming closer through watching cricket together in the early 2000s (Hong and Xiong 2003: 333–5; Merkel 2008: 291–2). On the other hand, George Orwell, who famously remarked that serious sport ‘is war minus the shooting’, has not been alone in arguing that international sporting contests frequently take on the appearance of surrogate wars which actually ‘accentuate inter-national dissonance’ (Close, Askew and Xu 2007: 54–5). The infamous 100-hour ‘soccer war’ between Honduras and El Salvador in 1969 after riotous behaviour by citizens of the two countries at World Cup qualifying matches exacerbated underlying political tensions is a frequently cited example (Goldblatt 2006: 533–4). The Asian Cup fijinal between China and Japan, held in Beijing in 2004, also did nothing to improve bilateral relations after Chinese fans rioted in disappointment at the defeat by Japan (a controversial goal in which a Japanese player appeared to handle the ball on its way into the Chinese net did not help) (Bridges 2008a) A more recent example, from which the fall-out is not yet clear, involved what one journalist sarcastically described as

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‘the great brawl of China’ when a supposed goodwill match between a US college basketball team and a professional Chinese team, drawn mostly from the military, in August 2011 ended in a chair-throwing fijist fijight between the players (Andrelini 2011). From this perspective even when countries espouse slogans such as ‘friendship fijirst, competition second’, as China did during the 1970s, there is frequently ‘a huge gap between offfijicial rhetoric and practical behaviour’ (Dong 2003: 86–8). In their own detailed analysis of the role of sport in a range of divided societies (though not including Korea), Alan Bairner and John Sugden conclude: ‘So important is sport in modern society that it will always be contested terrain. That means it possesses the capacity to transcend division but it is just as likely to highlight and exacerbate division and to provide an important forum for the celebration of diffference, often with damaging consequences’ (Bairner and Sugden 1999: 10). International relations theory has developed and diversifijied extensively during the post-Second World War era. The two major approaches, realism and liberalism, which are the product of long historical and philosophical traditions, have become refijined and redefijined, while Marxism/radicalism, feminism and constructivism have all added important perspectives to understanding how relations between states and peoples develop (Goldstein and Pevehouse 2011; Mingst and Arrequin-Toft 2011). Political realism explains international relations in terms of power, used rationally to advance a state’s interests and ensure its survival in an anarchic world system. As such, states are the sole important actors and military and economic power rules. Liberal theorists also argue that states are important, but that they are not the only actors in the international system (international institutions and non-governmental actors are also important) while difffering policy perspectives between internal actors can make signifijicant impacts on policy directions. Moreover, states can create rules and institutions that encourage cooperation between them; economic interdependence can lead to more peace and development. Drawing on social theories, constructivists argue that social interactions (‘socialization’) help to construct a state’s national interests and its identity in the international community. Marxism contends that in both domestic politics and international relations the unequal relationships between diffferent economic classes is important in that the more powerful classes (or imperialist states) oppress and exploit the less powerful classes (and states). Finally, feminism has several diffferent strands, but the basic argument revolves around the way in which international relations have been too male-gendered in the past and that profound diffferences

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could occur if women were given greater prominence in foreign policy decision-making. All of these approaches add to our attempts to understand international relations and, as appropriate, reference will be made to them in this volume’s effforts to elucidate the dynamics of inter-Korean relations. However, one further theoretical approach needs elaboration at this point, as it is key to understanding many of the arguments relating to the utility of sport in international relations. Functionalism, as a political science concept, has been imported from sociology into international relations and drawing on the work of David Mitrany and Michael Haas can now be defijined, according to John McCormick, as the belief that ‘states can promote cooperation by working together in selected functional areas….and that the ties they build will compel them to cooperate in other areas as well’ (McCormick 1999: 295. See also Haas 1984). Sport would be one of those functional areas in which the spill-over efffect is considered desirable and/or achievable. It is against the background of these broader debates about the linkages between sport, politics and nationalism and the relevance of sport as a factor – positive or negative – in international relations that the involvement of the two Koreas in sports politics and political games can be examined. In the Korean context, both historical legacies and post-division realities feed into the politics of nationalism. Korea survived as a nation and ‘maintained its independent political entity, national identity and high degree of cultural homogeneity despite incessant foreign invasions’ throughout its history (Yang 1999: 93). That national political unity, which Koreans proudly trace back at the very least until the year 668, was broken in 1945. The inhabitants of the two Koreas today do share a ‘homogeneous cultural layer’ (Jonnson 2006: 2–3): a lengthy joint history, a common language, Buddhist and Confucian cultural influences, family values, and even food and national dress. Nonetheless, formally since 1948 two Korean states have existed, each arguing that it is the sole legitimate central government on the peninsula. Nationalism, sovereignty and legitimacy are intimately connected. According to Han S. Park, each Korea or ‘each system has developed a political culture that contrasts with and often contradicts that of the other’ and the inter-Korean relationship is ‘predicated upon the premise that both systems cannot simultaneously be legitimate; one of the systems must be illegitimate and therefore disintegrate at some point in the future’ (Park 2002: 117). In the South, anti-communism was to become deeply embedded into its post-1945 political culture, at least until the late 1990s,

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while in the North anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism provided, and arguably still provides, a similar function. Each side saw the other’s developed social, economic and political systems not just as diffferent, but actually inferior. Consequently, as Shin Gi-Wook has argued, while Koreans both north and south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) subscribed to a shared concept of an Korean ethnic community that had been homogeneous for thousands of years, ‘territorial division created an additional political identity incongruent with their primary source of identifijication’ (Shin 2006: 152). The rigidities of each state’s political culture, at least in the immediate post-Korean War years, resulted in a highly charged competitive environment which has hampered effforts to create national unity ever since. There is a Korean proverb which says that ‘a brother can be a treasure if he is good, an enemy if he is bad’ (Hoare and Pares 1988: 180). In the current Korean context, therefore, both sides seem to subscribe to this view. Not just an issue of legitimacy but also a strong sense of mistrust and suspicion, which dates at the very least back to the Korean War experiences, and arguably to 1945. Much of the bellicose language of the 1950s has been reduced (apart from occasional North Korean references, for example, to turning Seoul into a ‘sea of fijire’), but over subsequent decades ‘olive branches’ (reunifijication formulae, disarmament proposals, and summit suggestions) given by either side have almost invariably been met with suspicion and reactions ranging from caution to denunciation by the other side. Pierre Nora, the French intellectual, in his lengthy study of memory and history argues that ‘memory, being a phenomenon of emotion and magic, accommodates only those facts that suit it’ (Nora 1996: 3). For Koreans on both sides of the DMZ, the Korean War, the familial and national divisions, and intermittent acts of violence across the border are part of a continuing process of remembering and forgetting in which sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously the past is distorted. Yet, at the same time, the emotions of that relationship with their ‘brother’, of whatever ilk, remain strong. At least until the 1970s, both Koreas saw international relations or, more specifijically, diplomatic recognition by the international community as a zero-sum game. The competition for legitimacy was a product of the manner of their birth which was only consolidated by the experience of the late 1940s and the Korean War (to be discussed in more detail in later chapters). Initially supported and recognized primarily by those countries associated with two global power blocs of the Cold War (Soviet Union, China and Eastern Europe for the North, the United States and Western

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Europe for the South), they became increasingly active globally as decolonization gathered pace in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1973, aware of which way the wind was blowing, the South Korean government dropped its insistence on a version of the earlier West German ‘Hallstein doctrine’ under which it refused to deal with any country that recognized the North. Henceforward, unlike the China-Taiwan situation, where both countries adhere fijirmly to the ‘one China’ principle and force all third countries to choose one or the other to recognize diplomatically, the two Koreas allowed other states to practice dual recognition (Gills 1996: 159, 169). But acceptance of the realities of diplomatic practice, if anything, only increased the interest of both Koreas in being more activist internationally. Global sporting arenas were to be no exception. For all the rhetoric of the Korean peninsula as the last frontier of the Cold War (which is still frequently utilized by the media even today), it has to be said, as Hyung Gu Lynn has neatly argued, that the year 1989 did not have that dramatic an efffect on the two Koreas as it did on Europe (and the United States). Admittedly, neither Korea was unafffected; for the South it presented new diplomatic opportunities while for the North ‘the disintegration of the former Soviet bloc only strengthened North Korea’s resolve to stay the course’ and resist damaging outside influences (Lynn 2007: 4). Consequently, the two states continued to exist, as did the complex and convoluted relations between them, representing what Hyung Gu Lynn describes as a ‘bipolar order’ (Lynn 2007: 11). To move back from the politics discipline to sports studies, Ian Henry and his colleagues have tried to construct typologies of comparative sports studies. They basically identify four major approaches (Henry et al. 2007). One they label ‘seeking similarities’ and is depicted as nomothetic as it involves summarizing large numbers of cases once the conceptualization is operationalized with the aim of fijinding generalizations across states. The second approach, ‘describing diffferences’ considers policy through detailed qualitative accounts of the specifijic policy history and context of individual policy systems. A third approach is termed ‘theorizing the transnational’, the increasing interlinkages or interactions between the nation-states and the global context (global pressures). The fijinal category, one which has still relatively limited exposure within sports studies, is termed ‘defijining discourse’, seeking to understand the ways in which the policy discourse defijines the policy world and the problems to be addressed. Although one chapter of this book does specifijically endeavour to draw out similarities and diffferences between the two Koreas and other divided nations (and thereby owes some debt to the fijirst approach outlined by

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Ian Henry and his colleagues), the approach adopted here primarily is to elaborate on the changing policy contexts through a detailed historical evolutionary survey of the two Koreas domestic and inter-Korean sports and cooperation policies, but at the same time being aware of the changing international/transnational environment which at key moments has had an impact on inter-Korean sports dialogues. As such, this book combines the second and third approaches delineated by Ian Henry and his colleagues. Comparative sports policy studies and sports systems analyses of the two Koreas are, unfortunately, hampered by the non-comparability of data. Quantitative data which has become available in recent decades from South Korean sources, through the annual governmental sports and national unifijication ministries’ ‘white papers’ and other agencies’ publications, cannot easily be matched by comparative data from the North. The kind of statistical data, for example, that is often considered fundamental to comparative sports policy analysis by Western scholars, such as frequency of participation in sport, levels of government expenditure on sport, time allocation to sport in schools, or hours of sport broadcast by the media, is simply not available from North Korean sources. Even basic economic data has been random and insufffijicient in recent decades, while broader North Korean socio-economic data, which would include sports-related data, is generally seen by the North Korean authorities as something covered by national security requirements (for fear of providing something helpful to enemies). The two authors of a recent North Korea-related study argue: ‘It is nearly impossible to conduct direct research on any aspect of North Korea’ (Haggard and Nolan 2011: 4). Yet, as Hazel Smith has cogently pointed out, North Korea is ‘both knowable and predictable’. Her argument is that far from relying solely on the stories of defectors, which do have an inevitable bias, there has been much greater access to North Korean society by non-governmental organizations, diplomats and international organizations since the mid-1990s which does make it possible for outsiders to understand the North better (Smith 2005: 5–14). Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland also admit that such sources, together with South Korean reports drawing on networks of informants, can provide valuable information in certain respects, albeit with caveats about information-gathering constraints and editorial biases (Haggard and Nolan 2011: 4). At the same time, analysis of the North Korean media output, including   the annual New Year joint editorial carried in the major media organs which in the view of Patrick McEachern (2010) is the ‘best, most

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systematic indicator of the regime’s strategic priorities’, can provide a limited but nonetheless crucial window on policy thinking. In the generally accepted distinction between ‘high’ politics and external relations, such as diplomatic conflicts, alliances and political relations, and ‘low’ politics, such as economic, cultural and social interactions, the focus of North Korean media output will inevitably be more on the former but it is, however, possible to draw out some policy pronouncements on ‘low’ politics issues such as sport. As Michael Silk and his colleagues have identifijied, sports studies have evolved over the past few decades into ‘an eclectic mix of research ideologies and viewpoints that seek to critically investigate the role, efffects and position of sport within broader society’ (Silk et al. 2005: 1). Sports studies, whether qualitative or quantitative, therefore have drawn on viewpoints and methodologies drawn from other (parent) disciplines, such as history, cultural studies, political science, economics, management, psychology, sociology, kinesiology, and education to name only the more common sources. Reflecting my own particular disciplinary evolution, this book sets the sports development of the two Koreas within encompassing disciplines or sub-disciplines of history, comparative politics, and international relations, but with the occasional nod to sociology, economics and cultural studies. As such this should be considered as a qualitative interdisciplinary venture.

CHAPTER THREE

TRADITION, COLONIALISM AND NEW STATEHOOD IN KOREA Forms of recreation and leisure in general, and sports in particular, are rooted in the societies in which they fijirst evolve, but just as those societies have changed over time, most notably through industrialization and modernization, so too have the features and characteristics of the sports played and enjoyed by those societies. Traditionally in ancient Korea, as in most other societies across the globe, the origins of what we now call sport can be traced back to the need for survival skills, in terms of both foodgathering and fijighting against other tribes. As such, hunting, fijishing, running, wrestling, swimming and spear-throwing became important skills for this agricultural society. Although scholars still dispute exactly when the Korean ‘state’ or polities that resembled a feudal state and society emerged in diffferent parts of the Korean peninsula (Barnes 2001), the introduction of Buddhism into Korea in the fourth century ad, it has been argued, facilitated Korean society becoming relatively more peaceful and the upper classes at least were able to devote more time to recreation (Ok 2007: 147). Over the following centuries, and particularly after Korea became a unifijied state under the Silla Kingdom from the end of the seventh century, various sports and recreations that did not involve solely survival skills evolved. James Grayson categorizes these under two headings: those that were basically ‘seasonal games of competition or comparison’ closely related to the agricultural cycle of the lunar calendar and those that can be called ‘competitive games of skill’ (Grayson 1993: 152). In the fijirst category can be included archery; see-saws and swinging for women; kite-flying; chariot combat; tug-of-war; stick-throwing (yut-nori); wrestling (ssirum); and polo (kyok-ku), while the second category covered taekwondo; backgammon; chess; and paduk (black-and-white stones) (Grayson 1993: 152–9; Dong 2010: 6–10). Taekwondo, which has subsequently become the only Olympic sport that has its origins in Korea, is thought to have developed from some ancient physical exercises associated with religious ceremonies. Although such sporting actvities seemed to lose their force during the early Yi (or Choson) period, later kings sought to revive or develop martial arts as well as allowing other ‘healthy’ sports to be played (Ok 2007: 149–50). These sports and recreations remained

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popular to varying degrees throughout Korean history until the arrival of the Western powers in East Asia in the mid-nineteenth century afffected not only the prevailing societal order and domestic political structures but also the sporting heritage of Korea just as much as for its larger neighbours, China and Japan. 3.1. Arrival of Western Sports Athough Korea had developed under the Yi dynasty from the fourteenth century a strongly Confucian model of intellectual life and a range of centralized political institutions, by the nineteenth century it was beginning to sufffer from weak leadership and political stagnation. It was against this background that the Western challenge came to North-east Asia. China was humiliated through the Opium War and other Western incursions and Japan was jolted out of its seclusion by the ‘black ships’ and the subsequent Meiji Restoration. Korea was unable to escape. The Western powers’ warships began to arrive in Korean ports from the 1840s onwards but the ‘barbarians’ showed little inclination for the long-term involvement that typifijied Western settlements in China and seemed broadly satisfijied with commercial treaties to open up Korean society and economy. The Japanese, however, felt a more direct security threat from the Korean peninsula and learning from the West very quickly forced Korea to sign the Treaty of Kanghwa in 1876 which opened up the country to Japanese diplomatic and commercial operations. Korea became a battleground for contending powers. The struggle for control over Korea was to be at the heart of two wars: the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 (Hoare and Pares 1988: 40–51). Even if Western imperial powers were not interested in direct territorial acquisition on the Korean peninsula and remained unimpressed by any commercial opportunities in the poor Korean market, this did not mean that they completely ignored Korea. In fact, assisted by the protection affforded by a series of treaties that the Western powers signed with Korea in the 1880s, Christian missionaries, carrying out one dimension of Western imperialism’s so-called ambitions driven by ‘gold, glory and God’, increasingly began to enter Korea and were to play a ‘pivotal role in the introduction of aspects of Western civilization’, including sport (Ha and Mangan 1994: 334, 337). Christian missionaries became heavily involved in developing both modern medicine and educational practices. Starting from the fijirst mission school, established in 1885, the spreading of

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Western-style sports occurred as a crucial part of the curricula of these mission schools, foreign language schools and, after its establishment in Korea in 1903, the YMCA (Ha and Mangan 1994: 337–40; Ok 2007: 52–7; De Ceuster 2003: 58–82). Although the Christian schools’ approach was not always welcomed by Koreans (for example, the Ewha Girls School’s insistence on girls doing physical education offfended traditionalists), in 1895 King Kojong issued a regal statement on education which stressed the importance of mental and physical education to nationhood, leading to physical education and sport becoming compulsory subjects in government and private primary and secondary schools (Ha and Mangan 1994: 340–1). Thus modern, or rather Western, sports such as football, baseball, basketball, volleyball and tennis, steadily became introduced into Korea in the late nineteenth century or early twentieth century. Under the guidance of Europeans, football teams, for example, were established in a number of places across the peninsula, but the popularizing of these Western sports was given a particular impetus by their becoming what Nam-Gil Ha and J.A. Mangan highlight as ‘most curiously, symbols of a Korean national movement responding to a national crisis created by the loss of sovereignty’ (Ha and Mangan 1994: 345; Podoler 2008: 3). Not only were sports actually seen by some Korean modernizers as a useful means of promoting national solidarity but also, as Japanese power extended across the peninsula from 1905, culminating in formal annexation in 1910 and the suppression of direct political action, sports clubs became the focus of indirect political activities. 3.2. Japanese Colonial Period The Japanese occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945 remains a complex and contested period in Korean – and, for that matter, Japanese – modern history. Recent scholarship has tried to move away from the overlysimplistic binary frameworks of colonial repression and exploitation versus national resistance, although undoubtedly both these elements did exist. This period can be better characterized by what Gi-wook Shin and Michael Robinson describe as ‘three inter-locking and mutually influencing ideas: colonialism, modernity and nationalism’ (Shin and Robinson 1999: 5). Certainly, in the years immediately following the occupation in 1910, the Japanese colonial authorities tried hard to reduce and control the athletic

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and sporting events organized by Koreans as just one facet of the Japanese endeavour to stamp out all resistance movements. Military-style gymnastics and mass drills were banned, team sports were discouraged and the frequency and size of athletic meetings were curbed (Ok 2007: 202–203). Somewhat surprisingly, however, the YMCAs were allowed to carry on with sporting activities, perhaps because they were mainly organized by non-Koreans; as Koen de Ceuster has demonstrated, they adopted ‘an active high-profijile role in the socio-cultural life of colonial Korea’, including sports, through the construction of (indoor) sporting facilities, the organization of school competitions and propagation of a form of ‘civilizing mission’ (De Ceuster 2003: 56, 69–81). Nonetheless, the harsh socioeconomic and political measures associated with the fijirst decade of Japanese rule provoked the large-scale but ultimately unsuccessful March 1919 Independence movement amongst the Koreans. Although the revolt was quickly suppressed by the Japanese military, the colonial government then followed up by relaxing various regulations, having realized that the Koreans had become too alienated. During the period from 1920 to the mid-1930s, while the Japanese carried out a ‘softer’ cultural policy, sports activities revived in Korea. The Japanese established a Korean Sports Foundation (KSF) to offfijicially supervise Korean sport, but the Koreans themeselves were allowed to establish in 1920 a private sports organization, the Choson Sports Association (CSA), which began to sponsor all-Korea football championships and a national baseball game (Ok 2007: 236–8). Sport actually became one of the few means by which legitimately opposition to Japanese domination could occur; large crowds would gather at any games in which Koreans took on Japanese and in some sports, most notably football, the Koreans were actually quite successful (Ha and Mangan 1994: 349; Podoler 2008: 3). Ironically, given the tendency in much of the post-1945 Korean discourse to simply disparage the Japanese colonial period, the Japanese themselves contributed to the development of Korean sport in two ways in this period. First, they revised the physical education curriculum in schools in 1927, stipulating the introduction of sports events to be held in schools (as opposed to most sporting activities previously taking place outside schools) and ensuring that athletic schoolchildren actually were treated better (Ok 2007: 242–6). Second, the Japanese introduced sports such as judo, kendo and table tennis. Under Japanese tutelage, judo came to replace a more traditional and similar type of Korean sport, while kendo superceded Korean-style fencing. Table tennis was initially played only

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amongst the Japanese residents in Korea, but in 1928 the YMCA formed a table tennis association for Koreans (Grayson 1993: 162). Koreans, as subjects of the Japanese empire, were not allowed to compete separately in international sporting competitions such as the Olympics. Similarly, Korea was excluded from the Far Eastern Games, the early precursor of the post-war Asian Games, which were held from 1913 to 1934 with active Japanese participation and leadership1. However, at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics three ethnic Koreans were chosen to compete for Japan; two ran in the marathon, while the third joined the boxing competition. Although none of them won medals, acording to an offfijicial history of the Korean Olympic Committee, their participation (and relatively good performance in the marathon) ‘gave the Korean people much hope and encouragement’ (KOC 1997: 34). This success, however, provoked a heated debate within Korean sporting circles about whether not Korean athletes should continue to participate under the Japanese flag in international events such as the Olympics. In the end, the views of Lee Sung-ku, who became the Korean respresentative to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and his supporters prevailed: Korea could make its existence better known to the world by outperforming Japanese in Olympic events (KOC 1997: 34). However, during the 1930s, as Japan itself became an increasingly militaristic society and the Japanese armed forces invaded fijirst Manchuria from 1931 and then further south in China from 1937, Korea began to feel the full brunt of Japanese control and subjugation. Policies were altered and determined effforts were made to ‘Japanize’ Korean society in order to turn it into a fully amenable arm of the expanding Japanese empire. One key sporting incident with political signifijicance in 1936 exemplifijied the beginning of the new Japanese approach to Korea. At the Berlin Olympics, held in August 1936, the marathon race had been won by Sohn Kee-chung, who had been forced to run under his Japanese name, Son Kitei, while another Korean, Nam Sung-yong (Nan Shoryu as his Japanese name), had come in third. Sohn was a proud Korean. When the Japanese anthem – not the Korean anthem – was played at his medal victory ceremony, he bowed his head and refused to acknowledge it; he later told reporters that he was ashamed that he had had to run for Japan. While in Berlin he insisted on giving his autograph using Korean characters. Regardles of the emotional agonies of his being listed as ‘Japanese’, for Koreans back home his gold

1 For an analysis of the history of the Far Eastern Games see Abe 2007.

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medal was a great triumph.2 The next day, a leading Korean newspaper, the Dong-a Ilbo, showed a photo of the victory ceremony on its front page, but covered up the Japanese ‘rising sun’ flag afijixed to his running singlet. For that action, the Japanese colonial authorities jailed several of the newspaper’s editors and employees and closed down the newspaper for nine months (Kim 2002; Lennartz 2004). In the later period of the Japanese occupation, therefore, the Japanese language became pre-eminent, all Koreans (like Sohn and Nam) had to adopt Japanese names, military conscription was introduced and the media came under total Japanese control. In the sporting arena, the CSA was closed down and forced to merge with the KSF in 1938, most Korean sports clubs were amalgamated with their Japanese counterparts, new manuals for the guidance of sports development and physical education in schools were published, and, in 1942, a new organization, the Korean Sport Promotional Association – ‘to assist in the reinforcement of the Imperial military power, training Koreans’ minds and bodies’ – was founded (Ok 2007: 260–9). Physical education became synonymous with military training. Ha and Mangan, supported also by Ok, have highlighted an interesting paradox of Korean sports development in the late nineteenth century and particularly in the fijirst three decades of the twentieth century, namely, that Western ‘imperial’ sport became ‘a means through which the Korean nationalist movement expressed a national bond in the face of Japanese imperialism’ (Ha and Mangan 1994: 351). Eunha Koh, David Andrews and Ryan White go further, by arguing that ‘at this time sport was the only method by which a Korean could dominate Japan and express patriotism’ (Koh et al. 2007: 317). In the 1920s and 1930s, Korean football teams on several occasions defeated their Japanese counter-parts; one member of the Seoul team which won the All-Japan football tournament in 1935 went on to become a member of the 1936 Japanese squad for the Berlin Olympics (Podoler 2008: 3; Koh et al. 2007: 317). As Ok has demonstrated, from the late 1930s the intensifijied Japanese control meant that Koreans were unable to freely arrange sports meetings and thereby ‘promote covert opposition’

2 Since the 1980s, the KOC has lobbied the IOC for Sohn’s original name (and Korean nationality) to be used in the offfijicial Olympic records, but the IOC has continued to maintain that the names and nationalities of athletes used at the time of competing should remain the rule. However, the IOC website describing Sohn’s achievements has been amended to show clearly his Korean as well as Japanese name. Chosun Ilbo, 16 December 2011.

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on a regular or collective basis (Ok 2007: 282–3). However, the legacy of the linkages between sport and nationalism remained latent in Korean minds and was to fijind expression again in the post-1945 environment. 3.3. After 1945 The Koreans saw the Allied victory over Japan as the opportunity to regain their lost independence, even though they would not have had the satisfaction of winning it with their own hands. Yet, although the 1943 Cairo Declaration by the Allies had stated that Korea ‘would in due course be independent’, little time was actually devoted by the Allies to post-war planning, so the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences in 1945 went no further than agreeing in principle that there should be Soviet and US occupation zones for the initial purposes of disarming and evacuating the Japanese. In the power vacuum that emerged after the defeat of Japan, it was the two superpowers who rushed in and the Koreans found their fate being decided by others. A zonal boundary drawn along the 38th parallel – chosen by the Americans because it kept the capital Seoul in their area and was as far north as they thought the Russians would accept – would soon lead to the emergence of two separate political entities, north and south of that line (Hoare and Pares 1988: 67–8). With the liberation from Japanese rule came political confusion and economic collapse, even though the peninsula had been spared the kind of aerial bombing destruction meted out on Japan by the Allies. The southern part of the peninsula possessed most of the best agricultural land as well as signifijicant light industry infrastructure, but the heavy industry and, most signifijicantly, the hydroelectric power plants were in the northern part. This economic separation and diffferentiation in resources was to have a signifijicant impact on the economic development of the two parts of the peninsula in the 1940s and 1950s. A huge influx of refugees from Manchuria, other parts of China, and the Soviet Union as well as exiles from the United States and Koreans repatriated from Japan added to the burdens of the fledgling administrations in both parts of Korea. During the three years of US military administration in the South, despite economic missions and generous relief funds, the economy ‘barely rose above a subsistence level’ (Oh 1999: 25. This paragraph draws heavily on Oh’s analysis pp. 25–31). American occupation forces tried to deal with disparate groups of exiles and liberated politicians, before deciding in May 1947 to establish an interim government to draft a new constitution.

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US aspirations for a ‘democratic’ polity, coupled with the emergence of the communist power in the North, meant that the constitution promulgated in July 1948 established a ‘democratic republic’ under a president, but one who could exert quite substantial constitutional powers. Inevitably it would become a strongly anti-communist polity too. After elections held under United Nations’ auspices, Dr Syngman Rhee, an elderly exile who had spent three decades in the United States, was elected President and the newly-created Republic of Korea was formally inaugurated on 15 August 1948, the third anniversary of the defeat of Japan. The Koreans’ aspirations for a free and united Korea were to be dampened by the beginning of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. The joint Soviet-US commission very quickly reached a stalemate – neither superpower was willing to allow trusteeship or unifijication to take place under the other’s terms – and as Soviet leader Josef Stalin dug his heels in and US President Harry Truman embarked on his ‘containment’ policy worldwide in early 1947 hopes of an amicable solution and the establishment of an all-Korea national government faded away. The United States took the issue to the United Nations (UN), but the Soviet side refused to cooperate, so elections under UN supervision occurred only in the South in May 1948. In the North, centralization of the Korean interim administration led by communists and under the Soviets’ aegis only began seriously in 1946, but the radical land distribution and nationalization of basic industries that spring efffectively ensured that the ideological and political polarization on the peninsula became more pronounced (Gills 1996: 39. This paragraph draws on Gills 1996: 34–45 and Lankov 2002: 1–61). The Soviet Union and its allies suspected the United States of manipulating the UN; so, soon after the South Korean government was established the Soviet Union supervised its own elections in the northern part (though it claimed clandestine support from the South’s workers and categorized them as ‘all-Korean’ elections) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was proclaimed on 9 September 1948. Kim Il Sung, an anti-Japanese guerrilla leader who had spent over two decades in exile in China and the Soviet Union and had been chosen by the Soviets to play a prominent role in post-1945 administrations, became the prime minister of the new government. Against this background of socio-economic distress and political manoeuvring, it might have been expected that sports would be a low priority. Yet, in the South many sports organizations, including the CSA, were either restored or created in the 1945–46 period. A Korean Athletic Federation (KAF) was established as early as September 1945 at the YMCA

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in Seoul and later the same month charity football and basketball matches were held between the British army and the KAF to raise funds to help repatriate overseas Koreans. However, the KAF was soon subsumed into the restructured and refounded CSA, which came back to life in January 1946 (KOC 1997: 38–9). The CSA and its afffijiliated sporting federations became active in organizing sporting activities while, at the same time, trying to tread a careful path through the minefijield of the chaotic and increasingly polarized political situation. The fijirst president of the ‘revived’ CSA, Yuh Woon-hyung, also a well-known independence activist and political party leader, was actually assassinated in July 1947 (KOC 1997: 40). Within the government structure, a Physical Education Division was created inside the Education Ministry in March 1946 to supervise sports development (Ju 2008: 202–203). In the North, the Korea Sports Union, heavily influenced by its communist membership, was created in October 1945, so beginning the development of sports again north of the border. Speaking to the fijirst ever Congress of Sportsmen in October 1946, Kim Il Sung emphasized that sport would no longer be the preserve of the ‘privileged classes only’; rather physical culture and sports should be developed ‘as an important factor of nationbuilding to ensure Korea’s independence and sovereignty’. He concluded that only by developing physical culture and sports on a ‘mass basis…….. can the health of our people as a whole be promoted and all the people become physically strong and mentally sound’ (Kim 1980: 417–18). One method to do that was the introduction of an annual people’s physical strength test (modelled on Soviet practices) and the designation of the second Sunday of October as a Day of Physical Education and Sport (Lee and Bairner 2009: 395). Moreover, surprisingly, North-South youth sports activities also took place, with an ice-hockey match and a Seoul-Pyongyang football match (reviving on old tradition dating back several decades of football matches between the two major Korean cities) being held in 1945 and 1946 respectively (Ok 2007: 301–302). But, as the flows between North and South of people and goods slowly dried up from 1946 onwards, these were to prove to be short-lived sporting exchanges. The steady and progressive closing down of all contacts and exchanges between the two parts of Korea occurred as the 38th parallel ‘slowly turned into a heavily guarded state border’ (Lankov 2002: 41). Both governments claimed exclusive legitimacy as the sole national government for the whole of Korea and so began a process of competition  for diplomatic recognition and membership of international

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organizations that was to be increasingly virulent. As the two nascent states began to consolidate power under the respective mentors’ influence, Koreans on both sides of the border began to seek international sporting recognition just as avidly as they campaigned for diplomatic recognition. However, at the same time inter-Korean relations were to progressively deteriorate, culminating in internecine conflict.

3.4. The Korean War Border incidents, exchanges of fijire, insurgencies, and various forms of guerrilla warfare across the DMZ after the two states had been formally established in 1948 gradually became more persistent in the two years that followed. From January 1949, the United States and its allies began to formally establish diplomatic relations with the new South Korea, while the Soviet Union and its allies began to do the same with North Korea. US and then Soviet military forces left their respective ally’s territory, but kept military advisers even though both Korean governments – and their leaders – were to show increasing impatience with the status quo on the peninsula and talked of reunifijication, by force if necessary. As both the United States and the Soviet Union were to discover, neither Rhee in the South nor Kim in the North were to prove to be a ‘pliable puppet’ and ‘both would cause considerable headaches to their respective mentors’ (Foster-Carter 1992: 8). Both North and South developed irreconcilable approaches to the issue of unifijication. The North tried to advance its position by couching its policy in the ‘appealing terms of national self-determination’ by calling for the simultaneous withdrawal of foreign troops and the non-interference of foreign powers, including the United Nations, while the South adopted a more defensive posture, based on a concern for security against communism, without any clear or immediate plan for unifijication, other than the rhetorical flourishes calling for the so-called ‘march north’, which was clearly an impractical dream (given the state of the South Korean armed forces at the time) to reunify by force (Kim 1986: 63–8). On 25 June 1950, North Korean forces crossed the border and with the South Korean forces neither well-prepared nor properly equipped, Seoul was captured easily within three days and then Rhee and his battered army were pushed further and further south as far as Pusan on the southern tip of the peninsula. However, the United States, which in 1949 had efffectively left Korea outside its declared area of defence interests,

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woke up to what its leadership saw as a communist challenge to the ‘free world’ and succeeded in rallying international support. Taking advantage of the temporary Soviet absence from the UN Security Council, the United States secured UN endorsement for resolutions calling for a North Korean withdrawal and assistance to South Korea. UN forces, mainly American, came into Pusan, but the tide of war turned in September 1950 when General Douglas MacArthur led a strategically-bold counter-attack through landing behind North Korean lines at Inchon. Now it was the turn of the UN-South Korean forces to prosper; by the end of September Seoul had been re-taken and the old border crossed. Pyongyang was then seized and by the end of October the UN-South Korean forces were close to the Yalu river border with China. With the Chinese political and military leaders concerned about the vulnerability of their borders, Chinese ‘volunteers’ then entered the fray in increasing numbers and helped the North Koreans to again push south and even take Seoul once again. Not until March 1951 were UN forces able to regain Seoul. By mid-1951 the battle-lines had stabilized around the 38th parallel and, although sporadic fijighting and frequently intense bombing continued up until the armistice agreement in July 1953, there was no will on the UN side to again push north (much to the frustration of Rhee, who even argued that the United States should use nuclear weapons to ensure the elimination of the North). Although after prolonged and frequently bitter negotiations an armistice agreement was signed between North Korea plus China and the United Nations (the South was not formally represented), no peace treaty between North and South was ever concluded (MacDonald 1986). After three years of war, the border between the two Koreas was almost exactly where it had been before the conflict broke out – along the 38th parallel – and unifijication seemed an even more remote dream. The underlying origins of the war have been and remain the subject of much debate and controversy (Cumings 1981 and 1990; Kim 1986; MacDonald 1986; Stueck 2004). The broader international tensions of the Cold War did provide some elements that reflected a global struggle between communism and capitalism, but more important were specifijically Korean dimensions. Kim took the initiative, convinced that military success was assured. Josef Stalin in the Soviet Union rather reluctantly endorsed, mainly because he hoped that any war could be fought and won swiftly before before any American intervention (Weathersby 2004). China did not play any signifijicant role in the preparation and Mao Zedong seems to have had reservations about Kim’s plans but anticipated that Kim would probably attack the South whatever happened (Chen 2004). So, China

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took a back seat, at least until the events later in 1950, when the approach of US/UN forces to its own national borders forced its hand. But both North and South had engaged in sniping and badgering across the border in the months before the full-blown attack; in that context the war had more of the character of a civil war between two parts with difffering approaches to governance. Both important and tragic was the devastating destruction and the terrible loss of both lives and property. Probably up to 3 million people died, most of them Koreans; economic destruction across the peninusula was massive (the North in particular had sufffered severely from US saturation carpet bombing from the air and the city of Pyongyang was practically levelled to the ground); many hundreds of thousands of Korean families were left broken up and divided; and each side’s social fabric was ruined, with all normal social life, including of course sporting activities, having been severely disrupted. A Hungarian technical delegation sent to Pyongyang in 1954 reported back to the Foreign Ministry: ‘Industrial plants were completely destroyed by bombing……there are no buildings, or machines, or anything else left’ (Szalontai 2010: xi). Other North Korean cities were not much diffferent, but so too were Seoul and many South Korean cities in appalling states of repair, even though they did not sufffer from aerial bombing to the same extent as in the North. Inevitably, the legacy of bitterness and mistrust on both sides was to become – and remains today – a signifijicant factor in the inter-Korean relationship. At the same time, there were notable domestic political legacies for both Koreas or, as Allan Millett argues, ‘the winners, mostly self-defijined, were the Korean politicians, not the Korean people’ (Millett 2004: 51). In the South, Rhee was left in a strong political position, with the ‘leftists’ or even ‘centrists’ in the political spectrum marginalized or discredited and the military claiming an important role in society. In the North, Kim was able to outmanoeuvre some of his rivals by deflecting blame for the failures onto them, but he also became convinced that greater political indoctrination of his people was necessary and that the North’s economy should be rebuilt and political control consolidated as a precursor to any future attempt to reunify the peninsula (Kim 1986: 159–60).

3.5. Sports Development in South Korea The political implications of sports policies in South Korea have been widely recognized. Ha Nam-Gil and J.A. Mangan have commented that

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post-1945 South Korean sport was ‘closely linked to political priorities, purposes and personnel’ (Ha and Mangan 2003: 214) and Gwang Ok supports this perspective, arguing that ‘sport was a tool of political reconstruction’ (Ok 2007: 300). Similarly, James Grayson argues: ‘In the case of the Republic of Korea the political use of sport as a conscious government policy has been clear from the very establishment of the state’ (Grayson 1993: 167). Taking advantage of his image as the ‘father of the nation’ and the symbol of the South’s resistance to communist aggression to make his position almost unchallengeable, President Rhee, nonetheless, after 1953 seemed more concerned about prolonging his political rule – and continuing the militant rhetoric against the North – than about creating a modern economy and society. Heavily dependent on US economic and military aid, the economy was rehabilitated but there remained ‘clear areas for improvements and new policies’ (Hoare and Pares 1988: 95). A forced constitutional amendment had allowed Rhee to continue to run for president, but after he won the 1956 presidential election with a reduced majority, his attention became even more focused on ‘running the country as a private kingdom’ (Hoare and Pares 1988: 76; Oh 1999: 40). The clearly fraudulent elections of March 1960 were to prove the fijinal straw, provoking a student uprising against Rhee’s growing despotism; street clashes and martial law followed, but in late April Rhee was forced to resign and a parliamentary-style government, imbued with ‘democratic’ aspirations, took over. But the initial optimism foundered amongst disputes in and outside the increasingly inefffective government. The apparent political chaos provided the excuse for a group of young army offfijicers, led by MajorGeneral Park Chung Hee, to seize power in a bloodless coup in May 1961 (Han 2011: 35–57). A military junta then ran the country until Park left the army and successfully ran as a ‘civilian’ candidate in the August 1963 presidential election after another constitutional reform had returned South Korea to a system of strong executive presidential power (Oh 1999: 40–55; Hoare and Pares 1988: 76–81; Kim 2004: 39–93). During the Rhee period, when almost all aspects of life seemed to be marked by disruptions and shortages, sport remained a relatively low policy priority for the government, but a new school curriculum introduced by the Ministry of Education in 1955 did at least have some impact. Physical education at the primary school level was to be focused on play, while at the secondary level sports were given emphasis and a close linkage between health and physical education was envisaged (Ok 2007: 306–308; Lee 2002: 76). Physical education was compulsory for at least three hours per week for middle and high schools and even university students were

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required to do two hours per week, with students earning credits for sport-related modules (Hong 2011: 981). Sports facilities, most of which had been damaged or destroyed during the Korean War, were limited and national interest in sport seemed minimal, not least because in an economy in which per capita income was still only US$79 by 1960 daily survival was more of a priority. Rhee’s intransigent attitude towards Japan found sporting reflection in his refusal to allow the Japanese national football team to come to Korea to play a qualifying match for the 1954 World Cup in Switzerland. Rhee apparently threatened his team that they should return as winners from the matches in Japan or else ‘drown themselves in the East Sea’ – luckily they did win (Podoler 2008: 4). Any sporting links with the North were, of course, even more beyond the pale. In summation of this period, to use Gwang Ok’s understated words, ‘Korean sport did not prosper greatly in the 1950s’ (Ok 2007: 308). That was to change, however, in the 1960s. Until his assassination in 1979, Park was to have a strong and profound influence on sport just as much as he did on other aspects of Korean society, economy, and politics. During the 1960s and 1970s Park used sports promotion as one of several means to create a national revival after the traumas of colonization and civil war. Labelled by some Koreans as the ‘father of modern sport’, Park introduced a number of innovative sports policies at both the elite and mass level and even the idea of winning the right to host the Olympics originated during his period in offfijice. Strongly anti-communist and suspicious of all who opposed him, Park saw economic development and social stability as the main way to build up the South’s strength against the threat from the North. His ‘methods of organization and decision-making were militaristic’; he demanded and largely succeeded in arousing within his people a ‘can do’ spirit and a ‘mission’ for national development. Park may have thought of himself in Confucian terms as a leader, but in reality he drew on ‘post-Confucian values with an emphasis on technology and technical specialists’ (Kim 2004: 6–8). The 1960s, therefore, were to be marked by rapid economic growth under Park’s ‘guided capitalism’ as well as concomitant social change, but increasingly also unilateral one-man rule politically. However, challenged at home, as social discontent began to rise resulting in Park barely winning the 1971 presidential election against the opposition candidate Kim Daejung, and externally, as the key ally United States embarked on rapprochement with China and even North Korea dallied with ‘dialogue’, Park controversially declared martial law and proclaimed a comprehensive ‘reform’ programme under the name of Yushin (restoration) in October

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1972. In reality, Park restructured the country’s governance into that of a ‘quasi-wartime state’ or a ‘garrison state’ (Kim 2004: 140; Im 2011: 253). Freedom was strictly curtailed, with legitimacy predicated on the basis of perpetual threats and confrontation with the North as well as the economic success record. Paradoxically, it was that very economic growth and attendant social transformation unleashed by his own policies that fostered frustrations and hopes of a greater voice in political afffairs amongst an increasingly larger part of society. Students, the trade unions and democracy activists struggled to have their voices heard as Park resorted to increasingly repressive political strategies during the 1970s. In the end, disagreements within Park’s elite grouping about how to deal with the rising aspirations of the people led to his assassination by his own security chief in October 1979. Political liberties were not encouraged by Park, but sport was. Rather sickly as a child, Park had physically strengthened himself by training in sword fijighting and other martial arts; he saw the value of sport as ‘an extension of the political value of the martial spirit’ (Ha and Mangan 2003: 227–8). His intention was that sport would contribute to the creation of a strong – and ultimately unifijied – nation. Indeed, speaking at the fijirst National Student Games in May 1966, Park declared: ‘The rise and fall of a nation and the increase and decrease in its national strength depends on the physical fijitness of a people’ (Ha and Mangan 2003: 228). He reiterated this theme consistently over subsequent years; for example, speaking at the opening ceremony of the Fifty-fijifth National Sports Festival in 1974, Park stressed that ‘physical fijitness is the base of national power’ (Ok 2007: 311). At an early stage, in 1962, the Education Ministry had introduced a National Law for Sports Promotion. An annual national sports day (15 October) and regular monthly sports weeks were established, new facilities such as gymnasiums were constructed, and fijinancial support was extended for athletes and sports organizations. Government funding  was provided specifijically to the KSC, which previously had to rely mainly on donations or corporate funding (Hong 2011: 982). However, according to both Gwang Ok and Bang-chool Kim these policies were not altogether successful, not least because of the difffijiculties of altering mindsets amongst teachers, parents and even students traditionally focused on academic rather than sporting cultures, resulting in some revisions and refocusing of policy measures being necessary in the 1970s (Ok 2007: 312–14; Kim 2001: 94–7). In 1970, the Education Ministry introduced a new sports promotion policy, with part of the onus being passed onto the

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non-governmental Korean Amateur Sports Association (KASA) to work in tandem with the Education Ministry, which structurally was to give greater prominence to sport by upgrading its Department of Physical Education to a Bureau, with concomitant greater fijinancial resources. Nonetheless, even though at least within schools physical education classes were being expanded and large companies were encouraged to allow physical exercise sessions, priority still seemed to be given to elite sports. The concept of ‘sports for all’, which was becoming popular in the United States and Western Europe during the 1970s, did not fijind any strong echoes in South Korea at that time. In 1966, KASA President Min Gwanshik had proposed to President Park that a training centre similar to the facilities developed by Japan should be set up to prepare elite athletes for international competition. Park endorsed this proposal and the construction of the Taenung athletic village on the outskirts of Seoul began later the same year. By the mid-1980s this site had become ‘a 65-acre, resort-like compound fijilled with standard Olympic training equipment……seven Olympic-size gymnasiums, an Olympic-standard swimming pool, a composition track and an artifijicial turf fijield. And $1 million worth of scientifijic instruments have been imported to measure physical strength, pinpoint psychological problems and computerize individual training programs’ (Jameson 1985). In 1972, a pension scheme was introduced as a further incentive for top athletes (Larson and Park 1993: 157). Even though initial results were not that encouraging the promotion of athletic success regionally and internationally rapidly became a national goal (Mulling 1989: 89–90; Ha and Mangan 2003: 220–1; Hong 2011: 982). Indeed, Bangchool Kim has criticized the Park administration’s ‘paltry efffort to develop physical education…..[as compared to] the government’s grander intent to develop an elite corps of athletes’ (Kim 2001: 94). For Park, elite athletes’ promotion resulting in sporting success was a key method to enhance national prestige. In one speech, as early as 1966, he argued: ‘We must know that our athletes going abroad to participate in international games and achieving splendid records have achieved more than hundreds of our foreign diplomats spending large budgets ever have’ (Ha and Mangan 2003: 231). Of course, Park’s motives may not have been just about promoting Korea’s global status for, at the same time, sporting successes – like economic advances – served the function of legitimizing his own particular style of rule. In some cases, he deliberately tied his own name to sporting developments. One example of this facet was the creation in 1971 of an international football competition for Asian regional national teams

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which he named ‘Park’s Cup Asia Football Championship’; in 1976 it was renamed as ‘President Park’s Cup International Football Championship’ (Podoler 2008: 5; Hong 2011: 981). Changes in Korean society also contributed to growing public interest in sport. Particularly important, in the view of Eui Hang Shin, was the introduction of television in the early 1960s, which acted as ‘a watershed in the development of sports’ for in this newly-emerging media industry live sports broadcasts were ‘a viable option in view of the time and costs involved in the production of the other types of programmes’. According to Shin, one efffect of this new media was that boxing, which was technologically relatively easy to broadcast because all the action took place within a small ring, became one of the most popular televised events for viewers (Shin 2007: 9). The compulsory military training that all Korean males had to go through also assisted in the development of sports, as they became necessary activities in the military service schedules. Indeed, the Park government set up in the late 1960s a special unit, Sangmu, that consisted of specially-selected athletes in diffferent sports. Top athletes who had feared disruptions in their athletic careers through the military service were able to take advantage of this route to ease their time in the armed forces (Shin 2007: 9–10). In addition, the Park government, which from the early 1960s began to determindly push the large conglomerates or chaebol to expand and diversify as essential partners in its plan to drive forward South Korean economic development, ‘encouraged or even forced’ these groups ‘to form and support sports teams in return for such favours as tax breaks on the expenses incurred in supporting the teams’ (Shin 2007: 10). For the chaebol these athlete-employees could boost the image of the companies and potentially expand the consumer (fan) base for their products or services (Shin 2007: 10).3 This was to be the beginning of a close business-sport relationship which remains in existence today. 4.2. Sports development in North Korea As in the South, so in North Korea sporting activity became an important  part of nation-building, societal mobilization and socio-economic development. The self-reliance philosophy and call for action, juche, 3 For an acute analysis of the state-chaebol relationship under Park, see Kim and Park 2011.

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promulgated and promoted fijiercely by Kim Il Sung, was applied to the sports fijield just as it was to other areas of society. After the set-back of the stalemate in the Korean War (which was nonetheless depicted internally as a victory), Kim worked ruthlessly to eliminate his remaining rivals, embarked on an ambitious programme of economic reconstruction (including Chinese-style collectivization) and later began to manoeuvre as far as was possible through the minefijield of the Sino-Soviet split, as his two main backers – China and the Soviet Union – fell out with each other. Kim may have been a vain man, keen to inflate his past record and create a cult of personality with its associated claims of his infallibility, but he proved to be an adaptable and demanding leader. By the late 1950s, Kim was clearly in complete control and began to impose his ideas and ideals to the full; the 1960s were to see Kim’s transformation from ‘dominant Party leader to personal autocrat’ (Buzo 1999: 78). As Peter Baehr has argued, writing in the context of Soviet Bolshevism and German National Socialism, ‘totalitarian governments were the foe of tranquility’ (Baehr 2010: 1). Kim Il Sung’s North Korea also fijitted this pattern: Kim not only purged real and potential political rivals but also inaugurated many campaigns (some of which, such as the chollima, ‘flying horse’ movement, possessed strong echoes of Mao’s campaigns across the border in China) in order to keep his people not only on edge but also mobilized. The KWP became converted into an instrument of Kim’s personal rule. The post-Korean War centrally-planned economic system, drawing on earlier Soviet experiences, initially produced efffective results in rebuilding Pyongyang and other major cities from piles of ruins, restoring the economy from the devastation of the War through agricultural collectivization and heavy industrial development, and producing high rates of growth. During the 1960s the North Korean economy was almost certainly stronger, at least in per capita income terms, than the South’s (Cliffford 1994: 43; McCormack 2004: 80–1). The extent to which Kim worked to position his country between and yet also distinct from the two great socialist neighbours can be illustrated by noting his comments in two speeches. In setting out his theses for socialist construction in 1955 he argued for the KWP being ‘the organizer and inspirer of all the victories of the Korean people’ but acknowledged that ‘not only can we draw on the advanced experience of the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China and the People’s Democracies, but we also receive great economic and technical assistance from them’ (Kim 1971: 26–7). A decade later, in a report to the KWP in 1966, however, he was to adopt a diffferent tone, arguing that it was ‘impossible to present

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the guiding theory of the party of a certain country as one for  Communists of all lands to follow……we should oppose all manner of interference  in our internal afffairs and guard against great-power chauvinism’ (Kim 1971: 140–1). The revised 1972 constitution declared the North to be an ‘independent socialist state…..guided in its activity by the juche idea’ and formally installed Kim as head of state (president), paralleling his already dominant position (general secretary) in the KWP (Hoare and Pares 1988: 214–15). Kim fijirst proclaimed juche (commonly translated as self-reliance) back in 1955, but over subsequent decades it became refijined and elevated from a mere political slogan to something closer to a religion or theological doctrine. Developed against the background of national division and the emerging Sino-Soviet split in the socialist world, juche represented a third way by emphasizing self-reliance as the underlying principle of all aspects of public policy-making and ‘socio-political life’. In contrast to the Marxist belief in classes guiding politics, Kim’s brand of socialism was led by ‘militant nationalism’, fijirmly founded on the ‘repudiation of foreign powers’ (Park 1995: 9–18). At the same time, in domestic terms, the North Korean citizens were expected to be ideologically and emotionally at one with Kim Il Sung and his family. In the view of Sonia Ryang, juche’s meaning was that ‘individuals are held responsible for making themselves into better and purer North Korean subjects by way of self-referential criticism and ideological cleansing; at the same time, they are expected to form one organic body in their march to attain the goals set out by the Great Leader’ (Ryang 2009: 78). As juche became elevated to the status of the supreme ideology in the 1970s, so too did sport become one facet of this new ‘people-centred social system’, to use the words of the North Korean 1992 Constitution. Kim Il Sung tried hard to link juche to sporting prowess. In 1972, he told a group of visiting Japanese city mayors what he described as a funny story: ‘Before our education was based on Juche, our people lacked confijidence in volleyball and soccer against their taller European rivals, but after experiencing Juche-based education, they became confijident they had a good chance even against their taller rivals, and they began to work out tactics for winning games’ (Kim 1973). In the late 1950s and early 1960s, North Korea devoted considerable resources to sports and physical education programmes, including ‘the specifijication of the required hours and levels of daily sporting practice’, as a means to create a more efffective industrial workforce (Lee and Barnier 2009: 396). Physical culture and sports departments were set up in all

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schools and many offfijicial organizations. One measure of the growing importance of sports was the issuance during 1960–61 of a number of postage stamps depicting for the fijirst time sporting themes, including one set to celebrate Physical Culture Day in November 1961 (Stanley Gibbons 1977: C66, C70). As Kim explained to his Cabinet in 1962: ‘Schools should be provided with sufffijicient gymnastic apparatus……Next year some money should be spent on making such equipment as iron bars, parallel bars, basketball stands and so on according the national standards for schools’ (Kim 1979: 32). Physical education was seen as playing ‘a pivotal role in building up the health of young students and preparing them for participation in productive labour and national defence’ (He 1996: 46). In 1958, Kim, in calling on North Korean youth to become ‘fijine socialist workers’, emphasized the need for these young people to ‘harden their bodies by actively developing physical culture and, through this, cultivate a strong fijighting spirit’ (Kim 1978: 119). In fact, Kim was fijixated with developing the physical strength of young people. In a talk with leaders of the Socialist Youth League nearly a decade later in 1966 he argued that ‘at present our children in general are short and rather weak’. He adduced two reasons for this: most of them were born during the difffijicult wartime or post-war years and ‘they are not interested in physical culture and sports’. He strongly advocated volleyball, basketball, and wall bar exercises as ways to increase children’s height, because only when they ‘take plenty of physical exercise will they grow taller and physically stronger and fijight well against the Yanks when they grow up in the future’ (Kim 1978: 204–205). A few years later, when addressing a national conference of athletes in 1969, Kim elaborated on his basic thinking on the importance of these aspects of physical culture and sport for the broader cause of promoting national strength and socialism: The strength of a country is decided largely by the physical and mental strengths of its people. The strength of these people largely depends, after all, on the measure of their physical exercise. Regular exercise makes them not only healthy but also strong-minded…….We must also widely develop physical culture so that all the working people can be healthy and strong and devotedly participate in collective labour to accelerate socialist construction……It is a mistake to regard physical culture and sports as mere amusements. Physical culture and sports are not diversions but are sciences. They comprise an important factor of the cultural revolution. (Kim 1986a)

He returned to the same arguments again in his report to the KWP Central Committee that following year, but with the added emphasis on juche as providing the correct guidance:

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We must popularize physical culture and sports and extensively develop physical training for national defence so as to promote the physical strength of all working people and fijirmly prepare the entire people for labour and national defence. We must thoroughly establish Juche in physical culture and sports and rapidly develop athletic science and techniques. (Kim 1971: 203)

Like China, North Korea adopted much of its basic – and centralized – sports administrative structure from the Soviet model, even though regular sporting exchanges with the Soviet Union did not begin until as late as the mid-1960s (Peppard and Riordan 1993: 105). However, there were informal sporting contacts before that, since, for example, ice hockey became popular during the 1950s when Soviet and Chinese workers taught the game and its rules in Pyongyang; the Ice Hockey Association of North Korea was founded in 1955. The Pyongyang University of Physical Education was founded in September 1958; it became responsible for training coaches, trainers and athletic programme directors to be sent out to schools, Socialist Youth League halls and school children’s palaces in the provinces. As Kim Jong Il himself noted in 1986 this University was ‘a major training centre’, although he still expected it to strive harder to become more of a ‘model’ centre for training sportsmen (Kim J.I. 1986). In factories and plants, workers regularly began the day with a series of calisthenics and running exercises. From the late 1960s, as the juche ideology became increasingly emphasized, mass sports, involving usually gymnastics, became a regular feature of North Korean society and mass gymnastics and mass choreographed performances were enforced at schools and universities both for building up physical strength but also for ‘cultivating collectivism’ and belief in the North Korean-style socialism (Hoare and Pares 2005: 87; Kim 1986a: 254; Lee and Garnier 2009: 396). But football, boxing, table tennis, wrestling, weight-lifting and other sports were also encouraged, at least amongst youth organizations such as the Young Pioneers, the Socialist Youth League and within the armed forces. Indeed, one defector has argued that football became the ‘heavy industry’ of the North Korean sports complex (quoted in Podoler 2008: 10). Although Kim Il Sung did not shy away from occasionally criticizing its shortcomings in organizing sporting activities (Kim 1986b: 314), the Socialist Youth League (which consisted of fourteen-twenty-eight-year olds) seems to have served as a training ground for athletes as well as future sports leaders. O Hyun Ju, who was Chairman of the Youth League in 1959, became President of the North Korean NOC from 1971 to 1974 and he was succeeded by Kim Tuk Jun, who had also worked as one of the

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Youth League’s vice-chairmen for many years (Chung C.W. 1983: 98). Yu Sun Kim, who became the NOC President in 1976, had previously served as the vice-president in charge of sport at the Socialist Youth League (Olympic Review, April 1981: 233). However, as even Kim Il Sung admitted, the results of these early physical education campaigns were not as satisfactory as he had hoped. In 1969, he publicly complained about drunken fijighting amongst athletes and the failure of local and provincial offfijicials to efffectively plan for the provision of sporting facilities (Kim 1986a: 256–7). Three years later, he told the KWP Central Committee that ‘no sport, not even football, is making good progress….Almost all sports have dropped to a lower level than in the past, and players’ records in international contests are not good’ (Kim 1986b: 312). In Kim’s view, success would not come at the elite level in international competitions such as the Olympics without getting the basics of mass physical culture right fijirst. Even when Pak Yong Sun won the women’s trophy at the 33rd World Table Tennis Championships in Beijing in 1975, Kim, while praising her ‘strong will and stubborn fijighting spirit…..emulating the revolutionary spirit of the anti-Japanese guerrillas’ as a model for sportsmen and women, advocated ‘thorough measures to put physical culture on a mass basis’ so as to produce more sporting heroes (Kim 1987).4 However, ironically, one factor in inhibiting North Korean sporting success through involving the masses may actually have been the practical implementation of the socio-economic policies of the same state. In the 1970s, the economy began to experience a number of bottlenecks in terms of shortages of energy and raw material supplies, curbs on importing modern technology after credit problems and transportation inefffijiciencies, which were coupled with an unwillingness to consider institutional reform (Chung J.S. 1983). North Korean citizens, consequently, found themselves working almost as intensely as they had had to during the wartime and immediate post-war periods. In the words of one Hungarian diplomatic report from 1977: ‘The leaders and the workers gave up their holidays for another two years. “Leisure time” has been completely eliminated. On every Sunday, they do agricultural work. People have no strength,

4 One measure of Pak Yong Sun’s reputation and North Korean pride at her victory was her appearance on a specially-issued postage stamp in 1975 – the fijirst ever occasion for any individual North Korean sportsman/woman to be honoured in such a manner (Stanley Gibbons 1977: C104).

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or opportunity, to meet freely and have informal conversations’ (Szalontai 2010: xxiv). The 1960s saw the beginnings of North Korea’s more overt use of sport as a potential diplomatic tool in international arenas. Until the early 1960s, efffectively sheltered within the socialist bloc of countries, North Korea had only taken part in sporting competitions amongst those socialist states (Lee and Garnier 2009: 396). Bilateral sporting exchanges were supplemented by ‘friendship’ competitions in sports such as shooting, volleyball, skating and athletics in the second half of the 1950s.5 Imbued with its concept of ‘friendship fijirst, competition second’, China was the most active sporting partner of North Korea in the late 1950s and 1960s. However, in 1971 one incident occurred at the World Table-Tennis Federation (WTTF) championships in Japan which showed that sometimes the Chinese forgot this slogan. North Korea, given its lack of diplomatic relations with Japan and its hatred of past Japanese occupation, had been reluctant to join the championships, but the Chinese persuaded them to go by saying that they would help the North’s players to achieve some wins so as to impress the ethnic Koreans who lived in Japan. However, the Chinese team coach urged his players to do their best, which they did, defeating the North Koreans. Reportedly, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai was so upset by this result that he sent a delegation to Pyongyang to apologize; Kim Il Sung magnanimously said that it was understandable that the Chinese should want to win (Xu 2008: 49–52). Developing links with the socialist sporting community was of importance, but the North soon showed that it also had its sights set on joining the IOC and so avoid being left behind in the Olympic movement by its more adroit southern counterpart. The following chapter discusses the early phases of this interKorean competition in global sporting organizations.

5 I am indebted to Paul Lu Zhouxiang for supplying me with data drawn from the Yearbook of Chinese Sport 1949-1962 on North Korean external sporting connections 1955–59.

CHAPTER FOUR

INTO THE INTERNATIONAL ARENA For both Koreas, sports development was intended to meet key national goals domestically, but against the background of the still vivid Korean War bitterness and the broader Cold War ideological struggle at the global level they also were also not slow to extend their highly competitive rivalry into the global sporting arena. Sport represented a tangible means to showcase the proclaimed superiority of each political system in this intense bilateral rivalry for national and international legitimacy. 4.1. Joining the IOC The Olympic Charter specifijically tries to avoid political influence on sports as one of its key tenets, but as with other divided countries in the post-war world Korea’s situation inevitably became a source of political controversy at the IOC and its attendant international sports federations. Unlike the United Nations, which with a few very particular exceptions, is concerned with the recognition of sovereign nation-states, the Olympic movement’s basic approach was that the IOC recognized NOCs not nation-states. From 1956, the ‘Olympic Rules’, according to one legal expert, ‘stopped referring exclusively to nations, and began also including countries’; ‘both concepts were intended to embrace geographical areas, districts or territories within the limits of which NOCs recognized by the IOC operated’ (Mestre 2009: 48). Provided that a NOC was formally and legally established and that it agreed to follow the rules and regulations of the IOC and the appropriate international sporting federations, there appeared to be no reason why that NOC should not be recognized as a member of the Olympic movement (Guttmann 2002: 87). Another precept of the Olympic movement was that NOCs should be independent of or autonomous from governments, but that was to be honoured less in the observance than in the breach, particularly when it came to NOCs from socialist states. The current version of the Olympic Charter does not use the word ‘independent’ but rather focuses on expecting NOCs to ‘cooperate’ with governments (Mestre 2009: 144). A further paradox of the Olympic movement is that although the Olympic Charter proclaims the games

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are contests between individual sportsmen and women, ‘the IOC created an institutional structure based on national representation’: only NOCs can select athletes, national uniforms are worn and victors are honoured by the raising of national flags and the playing of national anthems (Guttmann 2002: 2). In the Korean context, recognition of separate NOCs, national identities and independence from government influence or control were to be particularly tricky issues. The South Koreans moved quickly to try to ensure their recognition by and participation in the IOC. The CSA in July 1946 aimed for an embryonic national Olympic committee by setting up a preparatory committee. It took a two-pronged approach. First, to directly lobby the IOC leadership and, second, to urge individual national sports organizations to join their respective international federations as soon as possible. Avery Brundage, at that time IOC Vice-President and a close friend of Dr Lee Sang-beck, a prominent sporting fijigure within the CSA, met with one of the CSA leaders, Chon Kyong-mu, later in 1946 and was asked whether South Korea could present its case for membership at the next IOC meeting in June 1947. After Chon was killed in an air crash in Japan en route to that meeting, at very short notice Lee Won-soon, a Korean living in the United States was designated the representative to the IOC. However, his trip to the IOC session in Stockholm was complicated by the fact that he had no valid passport; he resorted to creating his own passport and persuading the governments those European countries he had to travel through to reach Stockholm to recognize it as a special case (KOC 1997: 40–1). Having met Brundage and IOC President Sigfrid Edstrom in advance, Lee was invited to put the case for Korea’s admission to the IOC Session on 18 June and two days later, the Republic of Korea was formally admitted into the Olympic movement. On 1 July 1947, the preparatory committee was formally reorganized as the Korean Olympic Committee (KOC), with Yu Ok-kyum as President and Lee Sang-beck as Vice-President and Secretary-General, and planning began for which events South Korea could realistically send athletes to compete in at the 1948 London Olympics. However, in reality, South Korea’s fijirst appearance in the Olympics was in the Winter Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland in January-February 1948 (Merkel and Kim 2011: 2369). Three male speed skaters competed, with all of them carrying the Korean national flag at some stage during the opening ceremony. No medals were won, but the symbolism of participation was important. More important, however, in Korean eyes was participation in the London summer Olympics in July-August 1948. The KOC decided to send

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sixty-nine athletes, mainly for track and fijield, football, basketball, weightlifting, wrestling, boxing and cycling. Preparations were hard. Kim Sung Jip, who won a bronze medal in weightlifting, recalled having to use makeshift weights, fashioned by a Korean ironsmith, that bore only a passing resemblance to standard Olympic weights. ‘The only gym we had in the whole country was at the YMCA…..And we weightlifters practised in its back yard on the bare ground. No collective training was conducted at all. Indeed, the biggest problem the athletes had was getting enough food to eat’ (Jameson 1985). Their problems did not end at home for, with no civilian air routes out of Seoul at that time, the delegation had to go by boat to Hong Kong, via Japan, and then fly in two aircraft (the delegation was too large to fly in a single aircraft) to Amsterdam and from there on to London. The South Koreans entered the Wembley stadium opening ceremony as the 29th of fijifty-nine participating NOCs. The Korean uniforms were ‘pearl white’ in colour but double-breasted and of winter thickness, causing the competitors some discomfort even in the British summer heat (the one woman athlete wore a traditional silk costume). Although the Korean marathon runners could not emulate their 1936 predecessors, South Korea did win two bronze medals (one each in weight-lifting and boxing), so succeeding in having the name Korea for the fijirst time recorded in the medal tables (KOC 1997: 41–5). The London Games also provided some good diplomatic opportunities for the Koreans. The Head of the Korean delegation, Dr Chung Han-pun, himself a Cambridge University graduate, was able to meet with several senior members of the then Labour government as well as informally with the British King, although, commenting on the presents brought for Prime Minister Clement Atlee, one British Foreign Offfijice offfijicial did note that they ‘do not appear to be particularly valuable or admirable specimens of Korean workmanship’ (NA 1948). Reportedly, King George VI was presented with a pair of stufffed pheasants (Hampton 2008: 87). Nonetheless, it did represent a good opportunity for the Korean side to lobby for diplomatic recognition of the fledgling government by the British government; the British government was one of the fijirst Western governments to subsequently recognize South Korea, in January 1949, though for political and ideological reasons that had little or nothing to do with sporting ties. The outbreak of the Korean War seriously handicapped Korean sporting activities, with massive destruction of sports facilities and huge loss of life. According to a letter sent by KOC Secretary-General Lee to the IOC in June 1951, however, as the front-line in the war stabilized some sports exercises, including friendship games with United Nations troops,

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were possible behind the lines (Bulletin du Comite International Olympique, September 1951: 19). South Korea was unable to compete in the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo, but it did send a delegation of forty-four athletes to the July-August 1952 Helsinki summer Olympics. After the National Assembly passed a resolution urging participation at Helsinki, a fund-raising campaign was started amongst overseas Koreans as well as within the military, so that sufffijicient funding was made available to send a team (Komai 1984). Once again South Korea came home with two medals, one bronze in boxing and another in weightlifting. South Korea had also shown interest in the formation of the Asian Games Federation (AGF), a regional sporting organization set up at an Indian initiative under the auspices of the IOC in 1949, but the outbreak of the Korean War prevented it from sending any athletes to the initial Asian Games, held in New Delhi in March 1951 (Sisodia 2007: 2–5). South Korea formally entered the AGF in July 1952 and did begin to participate in the Asian Games from the second hosting, in Manila in 1954, winning third place in the fijinal rankings with eight gold, six silver and fijive bronze medals. South Korea then participated in the inaugural Asian Cup for football, held in Hong Kong in 1956, and recorded its fijirst ever international tournament victory by winning that round-robin competition. Although the South had found the path to IOC and AGF membership relatively smooth and quick, that was certainly not the case for the North. The North made repeated attempts to gain IOC recognition for its own NOC from the 1950s, but was to be rebufffed initially. On 30 May 1952, a few weeks before the opening of the Helsinki Games, the Physical Culture and Sports Committee of North Korea contacted the IOC and asked to join the Olympic family. The initial IOC response was to ask fijirst for the formation of North Korea’s own NOC. In September 1953, therefore, the NOC was formally established in Pyongyang (Olympic Review, April 1981, no. 162: 228). But the follow-up was slow and a formal request for IOC recognition was not received by the IOC until March 1956, presumably in the expectation that participation might be allowed in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. Matters did not move as smoothly as the North Koreans might have wished and it was not until the IOC Meeting in Sofijia, Bulgaria, in September 1957 that the recognition issue was formally discussed. South Korea certainly had strongly opposed North Korea’s entry into the IOC, its NOC sending letters to the IOC in October 1956 and August 1957 opposing North Korean participation in the forthcoming 1960 Rome Olympics. The United States undoubtedly supported the South Korean viewpoint. On the other hand, the Soviet Union, which itself had reversed policy away from

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criticizing this ‘bourgeois’ institution and joined the IOC only in 1951, was clearly in North Korea’s camp. Despite strong pressure from the Soviet Union’s IOC member, Konstantin Andrianov, supported by various East European states, the IOC came to an interesting and unique decision. The so-called ‘provisional recognition’ of the NOC in 1957 was granted ‘on the condition that its athletes will be allowed to compete in the Games only if they cooperate in forming one single team, thus grouping the competitors belonging to North Korea and South Korea. Failing an agreement between the two, North Korea will not be granted permission to compete.’ This was broadly similar to the East Germany-West Germany situation (an allGerman Olympic team had been created for the fijirst time for the 1956 Olympics), but what was diffferent was the curious caveat that ‘the provisional recognition is valid only as far as internal afffairs are concerned but is not valid on an international basis’. The IOC also expected that its offfijicials should be allowed to inspect the NOC’s rules and regulations before giving fijinal approval and recognition (Bulletin du Comite International Olympique, 1958, No. 61: 72). At the time of the Sofijia meeting, the North Korean NOC had sixteen sports federations afffijiliated to it, of which six (basketball, boxing, football, ice-skating, table tennis and volleyball) were already afffijiliated to the relevant international sporting federations (Olympic Review, April 1981, no. 162: 228). The IOC’s basic criterion that a joint Korean team be established fijirst was clearly going to prove difffijicult in the tense inter-Korean atmosphere of the late 1950s, where there was no existing channel of communication or regular contact between the two states. At the IOC session in Munich in May 1959 the Soviet and Bulgarian members returned to the fray, strongly arguing for the full and separate recognition of the North Korean NOC. IOC President Brundage, however, again stalled, instead proposing that the two Korean NOCs should meet on neutral territory – since there was no likelihood of either side agreeing to meet on the other’s territory – to discuss the possibility of a joint team for the Rome Olympics; Hong Kong was suggested as one such potential meeting place (Hill 1996: 164). Although the South Korean NOC had given an undertaking to the IOC that it was ready to cooperate in the formation of a joint team, in reality the South Korean government was not particularly supportive of Brundage’s plan. Indeed, in mid-June 1959, the South Korean Foreign Ministry actually sent a formal note to the British Embassy in Seoul, requesting the British government oppose a meeting in Hong Kong in particular (Hong Kong was still a British colony at the time) and North Korean membership of the IOC in general (Bridges 2007: 377).

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The South Korean government’s attitude is clear from the tone and content of that note: ‘if the puppet Committee in the northern part of Korea were to be admitted to the International Olympic Committee…..it is feared that the lofty ideals of the Olympic Games will be destroyed and will inevitably turn the Olympic Games into an arena for political warfare’ (NA 1959). Foot-dragging by the South Korean side meant that Brundage could only report to the IOC session in San Francisco in February 1960 that, despite North Korean acceptance of the idea, the Hong Kong meeting had not gone ahead. Even after the change of government in the South in April 1960 to a relatively more liberal leadership, the South refused to participate in serious talks, so the North Korean athletes were left out in the cold and did not participate in the Rome Olympics. Only South Korean athletes participated in the Rome Olympics (Bridges 2007: 378; Espy 1979: 67). By mid-1961 the Korean situation was back on the IOC agenda again, with the next Olympics due to be held in Tokyo, Japan, a place that of course had particular sensitivities for both Koreas. Neither Korea at that time had yet established diplomatic relations with Japan and those intermittent informal talks that had occurred between Japanese and Koreans from either part of the peninsula had been short-lived, ‘lack-luster’ and contentious (Lee 2011: 430–4). The ‘Korean question’ resurfaced then as the socialist allies of the North began pushing again and by 1962 it was clear that the South’s rigidity was losing it support within the IOC. Consequently, at the March 1962 IOC session, the North’s NOC was given recognition along the same lines as East Germany’s, namely that a unifijied team should be formed as a result of joint competition (Hill 1992: 193). The North with nothing to lose quickly accepted, but the South baulked at this idea, so the IOC resorted to threatening that if no effforts were made to organize a joint team then the North would be allowed to compete as an independent team, leaving it up to the South Koreans to decide whether or not they would participate in such circumstances (OSC 1963a). This threat brought the South back to the negotiating table and for the fijirst time ever since the division of the Korean peninsula the two Koreas held formal sports talks, albeit under the auspices of the IOC, in Lausanne in January 1963. A second meeting the next month, under the chairmanship of Brundage himself, produced an agreement in principle for a combined team in Tokyo with various details, such as the ‘national’ anthem (the Arirang folk song), agreed upon. The IOC’s Chancellor, Otto Mayer, felt encouraged enough to send a message to the Tokyo Olympic

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Organizing Committee informing them that ‘we have fijinally found an agreement with both Korean Olympic Committees in view [sic] to have….. one united Korean team’ (Bridges 2007: 379). The South’s NOC then followed up by suggesting a bilateral meeting, without IOC direct participation, in Hong Kong. Consequently, the fijirst ever bilateral meetings between North and South Korean representatives after the Korean War were held in Hong Kong in the second half of May 1963 and again in late July 1963, but despite some cautious optimism after the fijirst meeting the second proved to be a ‘debacle’, with each side accusing the other of bad faith and the South’s delegation walking out (Bridges 2007: 380–3). Brundage tried to get the talks back on track by inviting both sides to Lausanne in August, but again without a real meeting of minds. The South appeared to the IOC to be becoming more intransigent and fijinally Brundage lost patience. At the IOC session in October 1963 at Baden-Baden, he explained that ‘a united team would encounter too many difffijiculties’. North Korea was ‘defijinitely recognized’ and it was unanimously agreed that there would be two separate Korean teams, one called Korea and the other North Korea (Olympic Review 1964, no. 85 : 70). The IOC hoped that through this decision the issue of participation in Tokyo would be settled ‘once and for all’ (OSC 1964b). Consequently, North Korean athletes did participate for the fijirst time ever in any Olympic event in the January 1964 Innsbruck Winter Olympics, an event which was marked at home, amongst other ways, by the issuing of North Korea’s fijirst ever Olympic-themed stamps (Stanley Gibbons 1977: C76). Participation, however, was not achieved without provoking some controversy over the North using badges and jackets for the athletes and accompanying offfijicials that had simply the word ‘Chosun’ (Korea) on them in contravention of the IOC decision, designating ‘North Korea’ as the formal name; needless to say, South Korean offfijicials raised protests (OSC 1964a). At the same time, the North also tried to use a ‘non-approved’ flag (i.e the national flag), which was rejected by IOC offfijicials (Pound 1994: 346). So, not until the October 1964 Tokyo Olympics did both South Korea and North Korea send athletes for the fijirst time ever to the summer Olympics. Yet, even before the opening ceremony could take place, the North actually withdrew completely after its athletes had arrived in Tokyo when some of them (including Shin Keum Dan, the then world record holder for the women’s 800 metres) were disqualifijied by the relevant international sporting federations and subsequently endorsed as ineligible by the IOC

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through having participated in the ‘anti-imperialist’ Games of the Newly Emerging Forces (GANEFO) held in Jakarta, Indonesia in November 1963. This withdrawal provided a last minute twist to what had been such a series of complicated and contentious effforts over the previous three years to try to secure a joint Korean team for the Tokyo Olympics (Pound 1994: 346; Espy 1979: 80–3). North Korea had seemed to be conducting a dual track approach, trying to engage with the IOC and yet supporting Indonesian President Sukarno’s radical anti-IOC GANEFO activities after the 1962 Asian Games had been mired in controversy over Indonesia’s decision to bar Taiwanese and Israeli athletes (Sie 1978). Indeed, in the opinion of watching US diplomats, the North’s vociferous support of GANEFO and its strident criticisms of the IOC did threaten to undermine its effforts to gain full recognition by the IOC (Hunt 2006: 278), but from the North’s perspective GANEFO involvement could be used as leverage against the IOC. Not only did no joint team emerge for the Tokyo Olympics, but, subsequently, as will be discussed further in later chapters, despite intermittent discussions over the following decades, the two Koreas have never fijielded a joint team at the Olympics. The North gained more from these failed talks in the early 1960s than did the South, since, in theory, from the 1964 winter and summer Olympics onwards the North was able to compete on an equal footing with the South. North Korea again found itself in difffijiculties in the run-up to the 1968 Mexico Games, when some of its track-and-fijield athletes were again banned for competing in the 1966 second GANEFO Games in Phnom Penh, Cambodia (the fijinals of this Games had only Asian countries’ participants after the only African country, Guinea, was knocked out in the qualifying football competition held in Pyongyang in 1965 and was subsequently re-labelled as the fijirst Asian GANEFO Games). According to Allen Guttmann, this ban was the reason why once again North Korea withdrew from a summer Olympics (Guttmann 2002: 110). However, according to Richard Pound, the real reason related to North Korea’s pride over its nomenclature in the Olympic movement. In 1963, the IOC had designated the North’s Olympic name as ‘North Korea’, but from early 1967 into 1968 the North lobbied the IOC for a change to its offfijicial title to DPRK. The Soviet IOC member Andrianov strongly supported the North Koreans, while the South’s IOC member Chang Jey Young equally strongly opposed any change. A complicating factor in the IOC’s calculations was that acceptance of the North’s demand would have entailed the acceptance of similar requests from Taiwan and East Germany. The IOC’s

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compromise solution – to allow the change but only with efffect from November 1968 (i.e. for the next, 1972 Olympics) – was considered an afffront by the North. Describing the decision as a hypocritical one driven by ‘US imperialist lackeys’ the North Koreans refused to march into the stadium as ‘North Korea’ and so efffectively withdrew from the Mexico Games (Espy 1979: 108; IOC 1995: 190–1). Objections continued to be raised by the South’s NOC, which argued that such a re-naming, as DPRK, had been only granted conditional on the North’s actual appearance at the Mexico Games, so that it had subsequently been made null and void by the North’s non-appearance in Mexico; a caveat that seemed to be confijirmed by the IOC’s own press release in October 1968, even though IOC President Brundage subsequently erased that phraseology from the offfijicial minutes (IOC 1995: 191). Nonetheless, with Brundage having turned a deaf ear to the South’s vehement protests, at the June 1969 IOC session in Warsaw the IOC confijirmed that its fijinal decision was that the North could use its offfijicial title immediately: the National Olympic Committee of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (Pound 1994 346–7). The North was pleased by this success and subsequently decided not to upset the IOC by hosting a second Asian GANEFO Games, which had been planned to be held in Pyongyang in 1970 but which was quietly abandoned. Consequently, GANEFO ‘died a quiet death’ (Espy 1979: 110) and the 1972 Munich Olympics became the fijirst summer Olympics in which both Koreas participated fully and, incidentally, North Korea came away with more medals than the South. In 1978, Yu Sun Kim became the North’s fijirst member of the IOC (Olympic Review, April 1981: 233). Although the North may have won more political battles in sport, especially in the Olympic movement and the World Cup, in the 1960s, the next decade was to prove not so fruitful for in the 1970s it was the South which was to become more adept diplomatically, heightening its profijile and ultimately deciding to wage a campaign which was to culminate in the 1981 IOC decision to award the 1988 Olympic Games to Seoul.

4.2. The 1966 World Cup Apart from the Olympics, both Koreas remained relatively low-key – and with relatively unspectacular sporting records – in terms of participating and winning in international sporting events during the 1960s and 1970s. North Korea’s fijirst Olympic gold medal was won in 1972 and the South’s fijirst gold medal was not won until 1976. But there was one clear exception

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to that assessment: the North Korean soccer team’s now almost legendary exploits in the 1966 World Cup in England. In one sense it was football’s governing body, the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) itself which precipitated North Korea’s fijirst ever involvement in the 1966 World Cup fijinals by decreeing that only one place would be made available, through group competition, to all those member countries from Africa, Asia and Oceania. Consequently sixteen out of eighteen member countries’ football federations (including South Korea) boycotted in protest. That left only North Korea and Australia, who faced each other in a two-match play offf in neutral Cambodia in November 1965; both games were won by North Korea. The North Koreans had only recently emerged onto the regional football scene, winning the 1963 GANEFO Games football tournament and the 1965 qualifying football tournament for the 1966 GANEFO Games. But the World Cup was a new and much bigger stage. The North Korean qualifijication caused initial diplomatic problems for the host country, Britain, which had no diplomatic relations with North Korea and whose Foreign Offfijice tried its best to avoid anything which smacked of informal recognition such as the display of the North Korean flag. The British Foreign Offfijice was also lobbied by the South Korean government, which urged a ban on the North Koreans. The South Korean ambassador in London was also upset by one welcoming dinner at which the North Korean flag was inadvertently placed on the table in front of him (Polley 1998: 4–13). Although one Foreign Offfijice offfijicial minuted ‘We have pressed for as much discrimination against them as possible and with considerable success’, the British also knew that they could not deny entry to a team which had legitimately won its place through the FIFA qualifying process (NA 1966b). Whatever the behind-the-scenes diplomatic manoeuvrings, it was on the football fijield that the North Koreans shocked the world. Based in Middlesborough, a northern English predominantly working-class town that soon took the visitors to their hearts, the North Koreans lost their opening game to the Soviet Union, but then drew with Chile, before surprising everyone by beating the highly-fancied Italian team through the only goal of the match, scored by Pak Doo Ik. Before leaving for England, centre-half Rim Jung Son remembered being summoned to an audience with Kim Il Sung, ‘who embraced us lovingly, and said: “European and South American nations dominate international football. As representatives of the Asia/Africa region, as coloured people, I urge you to win one or two games” ’ (Philip 2002). North Korea consequently fijinished above Italy in their group and so earned qualifijication for the quarter fijinals,

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while the dispirited Italians returned home to be greeted by angry tomatothrowing fans at Rome airport. This was the fijirst time that any nation from outside Europe or the Americas had progressed beyond the fijirst stage of a World Cup: the next would not be until Morocco twenty years later. The quarter-fijinal against Portugal also started in a dream fashion, with the fast-moving North Koreans going 3–0 up in the fijirst twenty-two minutes, before eventually running out of steam when faced with the brilliance of Eusebio, who scored four goals. North Korea lost 3–5, but they had won tremendous support amongst the British fans (Podoler 2008: 10–11). This remarkable story is now immortalized in the fijilm, ‘The Game of Their Lives’. Kim Jong Il later publicly criticized the tactics used against the Portuguese as ‘not good enough’, but he did credit the team with causing ‘a shock’ in beating the Italians (Kim J.I. 1986). For years, rumours circulated in South Korea that Pak Doo Ik and the rest had been sent to jail for womanizing and excessive drinking on their return, an allegation strongly denied by the players concerned (Philip 2002; Podoler 2008: 11). Kim Jong Il’s unhappiness seems, however, to have been directed more at the football offfijicials rather than the players. Lamenting later, in 1986, that the team could have gone on to ‘become one of the strongest teams in the world’, Kim declared that ‘the offfijicials in charge of physical training and sport have not paid due attention to developing football skills, so football has not made much progress’ (Kim J.I. 1986). South Korea had joined FIFA in 1947 and had even won its way through to the World Cup fijinals in Switzerland in 1954, where for the fijirst time its players encountered the sophisticated skills of the European teams and consequently lost both games heavily (including losing 9–0 to the favourites Hungary after having arrived by a tiring and convoluted travel route barely ten hours before their fijirst game). According to David Goldblatt, however, the team were ‘remembered fondly at home for being there when the country was at its lowest ebb’ (Goldblatt 2006: 834–5). Although the South went on to win early Asian Cup tournaments in 1956 and 1960, it had been frustrated by FIFA’s attitude towards Asian teams in setting up the qualifying procedures for the 1966 World Cup tournament and had fijinally joined other Asian states in boycotting the arrangements. Consequently, the South looked for compensation against its northern rival’s new-found international sporting success. Indeed, 1966 had promised also to be an auspicious one for South Korea in international sporting terms. While the South could hardly compete with the global interest and exposure garnered by the North from its World Cup heroics, the South did

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begin to advance internationally by not only being ranked second behind Japan in the 1966 Asian Games medal tally but also successfully being awarded that year the hosting rights to the sixth Asian Games, to be held in 1970. This would have been South Korea’s fijirst major regional or international multi-sport hosting event for by the 1960s the Asian Games had around eighteen countries and about 2,000 athletes attending each time, every four years. However, this success was to be short-lived, because two years later, in 1968, the Park government had to make the painful decision to withdraw after calculating that the fijinancial costs of hosting – and potentially security problems from the North – would be too great. This decision was criticized by member countries of the Asian Games Federation and Korea was forced to pay up US$250,000 towards the US$400,000 costs of the substitute host, Bangkok (Koh E. 2007: 70). Overall, Ralph Clough’s observation that ‘during the 1960s and early 1970s, sports were a minor element in North-South rivalry’ (Clough 1987: 318) has broad validity, even though it overlooks the 1966 World Cup story.

4.3. Inter-Korean Sporting Contacts Periods of relative rapprochement at the governmental level between the two Koreas frequently led to some discussions on joint teams for sporting events, but as the political atmosphere soured again so too did the sporting talks splutter and fail. In the words of Jhe Seong-Ho, ‘those meetings were proposed or had collapsed according to the whims of the political atmosphere’ (Jhe 2003: 161). Consequently, even after the political breakthrough of the 1972 North-South Joint Declaration, effforts made to develop greater inter-Korean sporting exchanges and even form joint teams failed. In reality, sporting exchanges did not feature prominently in the pre-1971 dialogue. Occasional references were made publicly to the need for exchanges in sport, more often than not from the North’s side, such as in Kim Il Sung’s 1965 letter to the head of an American-Korean institute (Kim 1971: 72), and intermittent talks were postulated prior to various Olympic Games, but no serious or regular contact occurred between the two sporting authorities or ordinary sportsmen/women. The 1960s were not just a notable time for North Korean football’s reputation, but also for North Korean diplomacy, as its anti-imperialist approaches struck chords with the developing and newly-independent Third World countries. The Sino-Soviet split, the emergence of the NonAligned Movement and the intensifijication of the Vietnam War all favoured

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the North by its enhancing its room for manoeuvre as well as creating potential new ‘radical’ partners, even though the 1965 establishment of diplomatic relations between South Korea and Japan, which provided the South with an important new diplomatic and economic partner, was a set back (Gills 1996: 98–116). Nonetheless, the late 1960s-early 1970s were, in the words of Charles Armstrong, ‘a time of unprecedented outward expansion’ by North Korea, even though it was ‘a peculiar and limited kind of globalization’ because of the contradictions between juche as a self-reliant construct and the economic requirements for active engagement in the global economy (Armstrong 2009: 1). However, the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s were also characterized by signifijicant changes in the international system, most notably the emerging rapprochement between China and the United States which had been stimulated by the famous ‘ping-pong diplomacy’, that pushed both Koreas into talks, despite their strong dislike of each other. An August 1971 initiative from the South led to talks between the Red Cross organizations of both states over ways to reunite some of the estimated 10 million families separated since the end of the Korean War, but only after US President Richard Nixon’s dramatic visit to Beijing in February 1972 did serious (and secret) talks begin. The resultant historic North-South agreement on 4 July 1972 did set out some common parameters – the so-called ‘three principles’ – for reunifijication that owed more to the North’s thinking than the South’s, at least in terminology: peacefully with no force used against each other; through independent Korean effforts, without foreign interference; and under the principle of ‘grand national unity’, transcending diffferences in ideas, ideologies and systems. The communiqué included a joint pledge to carry out ‘various exchanges in many fijields’ so as to ‘restore severed ties, promote mutual understanding and to expedite independent peaceful unifijication’ (Kim 1978: 298–311; Koh 1983: 278–83). The term ‘various exchanges’ was left rather vague, but could conceivably have covered sports exchanges. Indeed, during a discussion in Pyongyang in November that year between Kim Il Sung and Lee Hurak, the powerful chief of the (South) Korean Central Intelligence Agency and the chief negotiator from the South in setting up and following up on the July agreement, they lamented on their failure to provide a joint team for the 1972 Munich Olympics. If they had done so, Kim argued, they would have been ‘truly invincible’. They suggested preparing for a joint team at the next Olympics by participating as a unifijied team in other international competitions beforehand (NKIDP: Doc. No. 105). In June 1973 Lee Hurak returned to the sports issue by urging the North to agree

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to set up a sub-committee on social-cultural cooperation which could help facilitate the creation of north-south unifijied sports teams for international games (Kim 1978: 352–3). However, the fragility of the 1972 understandings was clear from a briefijing that a senior North Korean Foreign Ministry offfijicial gave to the ambassadors of friendly socialist states in September 1972. After stating that the North had no intention of a ‘march toward the South’ (something which the North had already told the South), he argued that the North’s ‘peace offfensive’ to ‘open the door’ between North and South was designed ‘to influence the South Korean people in the spirit of the ideas of the DPRK’. Under no illusion that future talks would run without problems, he frankly described the ongoing Red Cross negotiations as ‘a fijierce battle between socialism and capitalism’ (NKIDP: Doc. No.98). It, therefore, came as no surprise that the intermittent meetings of both the joint commission (South-North Coordinating Committee) and the two Red Cross organizations over the next year were marred by incompatible proposals and mutual vilifijication from each side and had efffectively ceased by mid1973 although the formal complete breakdown only occurred in 1975 (Downs 1999: 181–91; Kim 1978: 347–61). The faltering dialogue only served to show how far apart the two sides were on the practical implementation issues. There were clearly underlying issues of trust (or, more accurately, mistrust) between the two sides. Reviewing the intra-Korean interactions and dialogues of the 1960s and 1970s, retired diplomat Ralph Clough argued that the South Koreans ‘suspected all their [North Korean] proposals for dialogue to be smoke screens behind which they were preparing a military attack’, while the North Koreans ‘saw South Korean proposals as devices to prolong the division of Korea’ (Clough 1987: 118). The sports dialogue only echoed the rising political tension from mid1973. In August 1973, the South sent an invitation to the North to participate in an Asian volleyball competition, but by deliberately addressing the invitation to the ‘North Korea’ as opposed to the formal ‘DPRK’ association the South ensured that the North would be insulted and refuse to participate (Morino 1999: 41). Sports organizations and facilities in the South had developed to the stage that it could host some international competitions, but, under pressure from the North, communist country athletes did not participate, even though the South amended its anti-communist legislation in the early 1970s to allow for the entry if essential for friendly international relations. Equally complex was the situation of South Korea’s athletes participating in sporting events in socialist states with which it did not have diplomatic

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relations. The fijirst breakthrough in this respect had been the participation of South Korean student athletes in the 1973 Universiade (World University Games) in Moscow, which North Korea then boycotted in protest. Sporting contacts with other socialist states that were hosting international sporting events slowly began to increase during the 1970s (Kim 2001: 120–2). However, joining international sporting events in North Korea remained impossible. This issue reached a head in 1979, when agreement failed to be reached for a joint North-South Korean team for the 35th World Table Tennis Federation (WTTF) Championships, held in Pyongyang in April 1979, despite four rounds of talks at Panmunjom (Korea Newsreview, 3 March, 10 March, 17 March 1979; National Unifijication Board 1982: 167–74). Subsequently, the South Korean table tennis players were not admitted into Pyongyang; the team flew to Geneva and spent a frustrating three hours at Geneva airport waiting in vain to get visas so as to board one of two special charter flights sent by the North to ferry foreign athletes to Pyongyang. With no visas, the team had no alternative but to fly back to Seoul (Korea Newsreview, 28 April 1979). In the view of Albert Shipley, who was the President of the English Table Tennis Association and attended the championships in Pyongyang, ‘it was clear that the table tennis itself was less important to the North Koreans than the propaganda advantage of hosting the world championships’ (NA 1979). Indeed, in the view of another observer of the tournament, the North Koreans were concerned not so much about the South Koreans as about the American participation, evidently hoping that the there might be opportunities, along the lines of the much-touted ‘ping-pong diplomacy’ between China and the United States earlier in the decade, to develop contacts with the United States through the American athletes, offfijicials and reporters (Martin 2004: 139–42). Li Song Suk, who fought through to become the runner-up in the women’s singles championship, was the local heroine, although her success was attributed to Kim Il Sung’s personal attention to her training (Martin 2004: 142, 600).1 Nonetheless, the failed North-South Korean negotiation and what was perceived internationally as North Korean intransigence had two results which were to be counter-productive for the North: fijirst, international sporting federations became wary of the North, which was not again asked to host a major international sporting event, and, second, during the 1980s,

1 Martin is incorrect in saying Li won, as she narrowly lost to a Chinese player, Ge Xinai, in the fijinal.

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socialist allies of the North slowly became more willing to send their athletes to international sporting competitions in the South (Clough 1987: 318–20). North Korea’s sporting reputation was not enhanced either by one incident in the 1982 New Delhi Asian Games football tournament. Despite the North’s relatively good performances in previous matches, North Korean players and offfijicials became incensed by the Thai referee awarding a penalty against them in the semi-fijinal match against Kuwait; they rushed onto the fijield and beat up the referee, who had to be rescued by Indian police. As a result FIFA and the Asian Football Federation suspended North Korea from all offfijicially-endorsed football matches throughout the world for two years (Clough 1987: 323). The fijiasco over South Korean participation in the 1979 WTTF Championships, which resulted in both sympathy for the South and criticism of the North was unwittingly to set the tone for the 1980s. As Barry Gills has argued, in the 1980s, ‘North Korea’s diplomacy sufffered continuous setbacks, while South Korean diplomacy surged ahead with continuous and signifijicant gains’ (Gills 1996: 207). He attributes this reversal of fortunes to the growing economic clout of the South and to the mismanagement of foreign policy by the North. Charles Armstrong shares that evaluation of the North’s foreign relations, arguing: ‘International engagement without signifijicant internal reform or opening had some success until about the mid-1970s, especially in North Korea’s Third-World diplomacy, but this rise in global stature would sputter out in the 1980s, before crashing spectacularly in the 1990s’ (Armstrong 2009: 1). This contrasting record between North and South was to be as apparent in sports diplomacy as it was in other aspects of the bilateral rivalry, with the major South Korean successes in winning the hosting rights to the 1986 Asian Games and the 1988 Olympics (to be discussed in more detail in the next chapter) typifying that trend. October 1980 marked the Sixth Congress of the KWP – the fijirst for ten years and which was to prove to be the last to be held while Kim Il Sung was alive. He used the occasion to deliver a major policy speech, which did, of course, touch on inter-Korean relations and his revised proposals for a Democratic Confederal Republic of Koryo (DCRK). In his view, the DCRK, an interim stage to fijinal reunifijication, could realize north-south exchanges in many spheres, including ‘exchange and cooperation’ amongst sportsmen (Kim 1980: 16). However, the December 1979 military coup and violent suppression of an opposition uprising in May 1980 by General Chun Doo Hwan did nothing to inspire inter-Korean dialogue and the

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North ignored or rejected newly-installed President Chun’s attempts in early 1981 and again in early 1982 to reopen dialogue. Chun’s overtures included offfers to meet Kim Il Sung whenever and wherever as well as the suggestion, in his June 1982 offfer, that if North Korea could not initially permit complete opening of its society then exchanges could begin fijirst in fijields such as athletics (National Unifijication Board 1982: 283–8). Lacking political legitimacy due to the means of his seizing power, Chun faced strong domestic opposition and may have thought that his moves towards the North might serve to divert public attention. The North was clearly not interested and instead ‘demonstrated greater hostility’ towards the South (Heo and Roehrig 2010: 131). Tension on the peninsula escalated in 1983, therefore, following the downing of a Korean Air passenger plane by a Soviet jet fijighter in September, the North Korean terrorist attack in Rangoon, Burma, in October, when Chun escaped but four of his ministers died) and the infijiltration of North Korean spies in December along the South Korean coast (Cliffford 1994: 204–208). These events not only made President Chun more paranoid about the North, but proved counter-productive for the North. The Burmese, for example, were so angry at the blatant attack on their soil that they broke offf diplomatic relations with the North (Park 1991: 9–14). As at least one attempted way to come out of its increasing international isolation, North Korea fijirst proposed in January 1984 a tripartite conference between the two Koreas and the United States (flatly rejected by South Korea which called for direct talks between just the two Koreas) and then in March 1984 called for an inter-Korean sports meeting to discuss the possibility of a single inter-Korean team attending the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics (Lee 1985: 88). However, the three meetings held in April-May again proved abortive; the South demanded an apology for the Rangoon tragedy as a prerequisite for bilateral sports cooperation, an action which the North was unwilling to undertake. Indeed, in the view of Park SangHyun, the main intention on the South Korean side for entering into these discussions was ‘to place blame’ on the North for the Rangoon attack (Park 2007: 88–9). The fijinal nail in this particular cofffijin was the North’s decision to join the Soviet-led boycott of the 1984 Olympics (Lee 1985: 88; Pound 1994: 71–3). Various economic, humanitarian and parliamentary contacts between the North and the South did occur later in 1984, prompted by interKorean Red Cross meetings in September 1984 to discuss the delivery of supplies to flood victims in the South, when the South surprised the North by accepting its offfers of food and other humanitarian assistance.

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These contacts continued in a desultory fashion through 1985 before being suspended by the North in February 1986 in protest against the US-South Korean ‘Team Spirit’ military exercises (Foster-Carter 1992: 50–2). As will be discussed in the next chapter, discussions over the co-hosting of the Seoul Olympics were then to become the only venue for North-South interaction in the 1986–88 period.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE SEOUL OLYMPICS It was the memories and tensions of the partial boycotts of the 1980 and 1984 Olympics in Moscow and Los Angeles, respectively, and the IOC’s determination to secure a boycott-free Olympics in Seoul that made the run up to the 1988 Olympics a particular focus of political controversy, partly for internal political concerns within South Korea (and consequent external disquiet about that situation) and partly because of North Korea’s ardent criticisms and demands for a co-hosting arrangement, and the potential impact on participation by the socialist allies of the North. Nonetheless, the Seoul Olympics of 1988 represented a hugely symbolic ‘coming out party’ for the South Koreans. 160 nations and over 13,000 athletes competed at what was, at that time, the biggest ever Olympics. But, for Koreans, it was not just the scale, it was the national efffort and pride that they put into achieving a successful hosting that was important. After a traumatic twentieth-century history in which colonialism, division, civil war, and authoritarian governments had all left their mark, the Olympics provided an opportunity for the South Koreans not just to unite together in one gigantic task but also, perhaps for the fijirst time on a global scale, to transmit the cultural essence of ‘Korean-ness’ to the outside world. In considering the various dimensions of the shorter-term impact on and the longer-term legacies for South Korea, it is necessary to remember that legacies (or to use the even more positive connotations of the French equivalent ‘heritage’) of mega-events such as the Olympics can be both tangible (or ‘hard’), often with the implication of being monetary in nature and subject to measurement, and intangible (or ‘soft’), which appear more nebulous and less susceptible to quantifijication. This is not to imply, however, that one may be more important than the other, only that both should be taken into account (MacAloon 2003: 271). Certainly, in the case of the Seoul Olympics and South Korea, it is possible to discern both tangible and intangible legacies and both were to be important for the government and people of Korea.

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Given President Park’s strong top-down style of government and his personal admiration for the Japanese model of economic development and what he saw as the benefijicial impact of the Tokyo Olympics on that national development process, as discussed in the previous chapters, it was not surprising that the idea of winning the right to host the Olympics originated during Park’s period in power, ironically only a few weeks before his assassination (Park 1991: 1–6). It was one of Park’s key military aides, Park Jong-kyu, who provided the key foundation to the idea of going for an Olympic bid by organizing successfully the 42nd World Shooting Championships in Seoul in September 1978 (the fijirst world championship ever held in South Korea). Impressed by that event President Park soon got the Mayor of Seoul on board and the intention to bid for the Olympics was announced in early October 1979 (Mangan et al. 2011: 2344–7). However, the new civilian government after Park’s assassination later the same month had been initially more hesitant about a bid. Rising political instability, with growing (and bloody) confrontation between the military and the people, forced further delay. Only after President Chun seized power through a military coup did the Olmpics return to the agenda. Chun himself, like Park, was a military offfijicer keen on sport, as was his righthand man and eventual successor, Roh Tae Woo (Ha and Mangan 2003: 232). Once the Chun government had decided in late 1980 to fully commit to bids for both the 1986 Asian Games and the 1988 Olympics, the South Korean NOC backed up by the government waged a campaign which, though initially rather confused, was nonetheless efffective enough and well-funded enough in the later stages to culminate in the 1981 IOC decision to award the 1988 Olympics to Seoul, which defeated the only other candidate, Nagoya, by a comfortable margin of votes (Park 1991: 6–8; Koh E. 2007: 66–7; Mangan et al. 2011: 2349–52). It should be noted that some within the South Korean government did consider the option of allowing Pyongyang to be chosen as the host of the 1986 Asian Games as a means to lessen the North’s hostility to the Seoul Olympics, but President Chun decided against this option, resulting in Seoul uncontestedly winning the hosting decision later the same year, 1981, at the AGF meeting after Pyongyang withdrew in advance, fearing another likely Seoul victory (Clough 1987: 323; Pound 1994: 49). While, of course, the 1986 Asian Games came to act as a dress-rehearsal for the 1988 Olympics, it also had its own signifijicance for enhancing South Korean self-confijidence and for eliminating the shame of having to withdraw from hosting two decades earlier (Koh E. 2007: 70–2).

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The 1988 Olympics became a particular focus of political controversy primarily because of two issues: fijirst, domestic stability of South Korea, given that President Chun had seized power in a military coup in late 1979 barely a year before the IOC decision to award the Games was made and had shown little concern for democratic sensibilities subequently, and, second, the ever tense relationship with North Korea. The impact of the Games hosting on domestic politics and particularly the road to democratization will be discussed further below, but fijirst it is necessary to examine the North Korean role. After pausing briefly to take in the shock of the South Korean victory in the bidding ‘war’ the North Koreans began to criticize the choice of Seoul complaining that it was unfijit ‘in every respect’ to host the Olympic Games, but during a series of meetings during 1984 the IOC held fijirm and refused to change venue. Consequently, following up a suggestion from Cuban President Fidel Castro in late 1984, the North changed tack and in July 1985 asked for a co-hosting arrangement, sharing equally in the sports events and television revenues (Oberdorfer 2001: 181). The South publicly rejected this ‘absurb demand’, but when the IOC on the other hand showed some willingness to discuss the possibilities of some events being held in the North the South had little option but to reluctantly agree to play along. There then followed during 1985–88 a series of convoluted discussions, which are described in impressive detail in Richard Pound’s classic insider account (Pound 1994). Since the Games would clearly not be taken away from Seoul, the North had tried to make the best of a bad situation by picking up the Cuban suggestion as a face-saving mechanism. For the North, in the words of a senior government offfijicial, the proposal for co-hosting was intended to ‘save’ the Olympic movement, ensure the ‘smooth holding’ of the Games and create a ‘favourable atmosphere’ for peace on the Korean peninsula, while warning that failure to accept its proposal would ‘result in freezing the division of Korea…..and encouraging the US imperialists’ occupation of south Korea’ (Senn 1999: 221). Underlying this rhetoric, however, was the reality that, as Hwang Jang Yop, the senior ideologue for the KWP, explained to East German comrades in 1985, the North saw the Seoul Olympics not just as an athletic issue, but as ‘an important political question touching on the basic interests of world revolution, of whether the attraction of socialism or capitalism will be strengthened on the Korean peninsula’ (Oberdorfer 2001: 181). For the South the co-hosting proposal was totally unacceptable, because it was contrary to the IOC spirit and rules (the Games are awarded to a single city) as well as threatening to take away many of the benefijits and

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prestige that South Korea clearly expected from hosting such a megaevent. Nonetheless, judging from comments made by KASA President Roh Tae Woo in October 1984 about the need to discuss and prepare for fijielding a single team at the Asian and Olympic Games, some room for manoeuvre might have been emerging (Rhee 1986: 64–5). Consequently, when IOC President Samaranch began a prolonged series of negotiations with the North Koreans (and frequently the South Koreans) in October 1985, the South did make some conciliatory offfers about possibly transferring the preliminary rounds of a few sports to the North. According to Richard Pound, a key observer inside the IOC, given that the IOC had no realistic expectation of an agreement acceptable to both Koreas and the IOC ever being reached, the talks were ‘essentially, a matter of buying time, fijirst, to let the international acceptance of the Games in Seoul grow, and, second, to prevent countries sympathetic to or bound in a political manner to the DPRK from making any preemptive statements of non-participation’. The IOC also calculated that when it was still engaged in talks, North Korea would not be able to use other means to stop the Games from taking place (Pound 1994: 84–5). The South went along with these talks – and what the President of the Seoul Olympic Organizing Committee, Park Se-jik, described as ‘continual outrageous North Korean demands’ – because it felt that by ‘keeping the North Koreans at the conference table, we could prevent them from committing barbarous atrocities’ as well as providing justifijication for the Soviet Union and other socialist states to participate in the Seoul Olympics (Park 1991: 17–18). Documents on the discussions between the South Korean political leadership and IOC President Samaranch do show that the South Koreans had never wanted to share with the North and felt confijident that the North would never dare to undertake direct military action, so that they ‘were likely lured into the talks……only by the possibility of a socialist boycott of the Games’. As the South Koreans began to learn that such a boycott was becoming increasingly unlikely they hardened their position (Radchenko 2011). At one stage the two Korean NOCs and the IOC did come close to agreement over some preliminary rounds of a few sports being held in the North and the IOC was on the verge of committing three complete events to the North, though the IOC had never at any stage envisaged giving half or even one-third of the Games to the North, despite what the North seemed to expect. But the offfers were not sufffijicient to satisfy the North’s sense of dignity and entitlement – nor were they intended to be by the IOC – and whether through stubbornness or miscalculation, the North missed the opportunities that were available to them (Radchenko 2011). Despite IOC

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apparent willingness to keep the door open until the very last minute, the North baulked at the IOC’s terms and conditions, for example, over unconstrained access for athletes, spectators and media to North Korea. North Korean athletes did not participate in the Seoul Olympics and neither were the Games broadcast to the North Korean people. As the East German ambassador in Pyongyang reported back to his government in Berlin, the inflexible North Korean approach had put it ‘once again….in selfimposed isolation’ (Oberdrorfer 2001: 182–3). The South Korean triumph was complete. In considering the impact and legacies of those Seoul Olympics on South Korea, it is possible to divide these into three broad categories: economic, socio-cultural, and political-diplomatic.1 5.2. Economic Costs and Benefijits The Korean government offfijicials were aware of Montreal’s fijinancial problems after the 1976 Olympics, but that did not discourage them from arguing not just for the likely economic benefijits from the Seoul Games nor from investing in signifijicant infrastructural development. Unlike the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles which had used many existing facilities, the Koreans decided to build a completely new Olympic stadium, an Olympic Park, and many associated facilities. South Korea invested around US$3.6 billion in Olympics-related infrastructure developments, of which the central government and the city contributed roughly onethird each, with the remainder coming from private companies. Three new underground railway lines in Seoul were completed, additional capacity was added to Kimpo international airport, roadsides within Seoul were improved and ‘beautifijied’, parks and gardens within the city were expanded or renovated, and a massive project to clean up and make the Han river which flows through the centre of Seoul more accessible to the public was carried out, as was the cleaning up of the polluted Suyong Bay, Pusan, where the sailing events were held (Park 1991: 95–102).2 All these urban reconstruction developments have remained as a very visible legacy

1 The following sections of this chapter on the three categories of legacies draws on some material from Bridges 2008b. 2 It has been suggested that another motive behind cleaning up the Han river was the discovery through satellite intelligence that North Korea had made impressive progress in modernizing the Daedong river – thereby becoming another facet of bilateral competition (Thomas 2011: 91).

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of the Olympics. Although not all the sporting stadiums around the Olympic Park are used regularly (the velodrome seems to be the one most in use), the whole area has become a popular place for Seoulites to walk, jog and picnic and many of them see it as a ‘green lung’ in the centre of the city. Two particular sources of revenue were important for Seoul: income from the media broadcasting rights, which came to US$380 million, and corporate sponsorship by multinational companies (Bridges 2008b: 1942). The newly-created ‘The Olympic Programme’ (TOP) meant that a few select multinational companies, such as Coca-Cola, Visa, Philips and 3M, were allowed to claim worldwide partner status (Gratton and Taylor 1988: 55–6). For the Korean government, there were clearly the direct though often short-term benefijits of increased production and employment, particularly in the construction and related industries, as well as tourism, but, over the longer term, however, the main benefijiciary was to be the South Korean telecommunications industry, which not only rose to the challenge of creating a full-scale integration of computer and communications systems for providing results and other information but also gained a signifijicant ‘across-the-board impetus’ in developing new hardware and software for the related information industries (Larson and Park 1993: 143–5). Much as the earlier Tokyo Olympics had assisted Japanese electronics companies to develop, so the Seoul Olympics also provided a springboard for Samsung and other electronics companies to showcase their technologies and hardwares. Overall, government economists pointed to heightened economic growth rates in the years surrounding the Olympics as representing the positive side of the economic balance-sheet. Certainly, the construction and other activities related to the Olympics did contribute to the strong economic growth record prior to the Olympics for South Korea, which averaged just over 10% per annum in the 1986–88 period, one of the highest rates in the world, although there was a slow-down in 1989 to only 6% growth (a fijigure which was still the envy of many slow-growing Western economies at that time). But also there occurred a more indirect and longer-term legacy or ‘soft’ structural improvement (to use Holger Preuss’s term) on economic policies in general, which underwent greater pressure for more openness. The economic success of South Korea – the so-called ‘miracle on the Han river’ – had been predicated on a strong government role, especially in promoting key sectors of industry and underpinning the exporting

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machine, while at the same time being more restrictive to imports (apart from necessary raw materials and components) and inward foreign investment. The involvement of major foreign companies through the TOP scheme and other sponsorships in the Olympics inevitably increased the pressure on the Korean government to open up other aspects of the economy, or, to be more precise, to speed up the rather grudging pace of liberalization of the economy that had begun in the early 1980s. However, although liberalization did proceed, it was the much more traumatic efffects of the Asian fijinancial crisis in 1997–98 that fijinally saw a sea change in South Korean thinking about economic openness. Not everything was positive. Unfortunately, some of these projects could only be accomplished at some human cost; around three-quarters of a million urban poor were evicted from their homes which were then replaced with middle-class apartments (Davis 2011: 110). Apart from this treatment of residents in some ‘redevelopment’ zones within Seoul, South Koreans – or Seoulites at least – did grumble about having to pay heavier taxes or being encouraged to contribute to national fund-raising lotteries – and the trafffijic problems in areas neighbouring to the Olympic Park were at the very least inconvenient. Some critics argued that the fijinancial resources being poured into the Olympics were distorting what should be the economic priorities of the government, but the major South Korean economic think-tanks generally emphasized that, considering the economy as a whole, the benefijits outweighed the costs. What economists, however, have not agreed upon is the exact amount of these benefijits. Diffferent organizations and diffferent scholars have coming up with varying estimates, depending on the methodologies and defijinitions employed, ranging upwards to one estimate of a total impact equivalent to US$ 9.3 billion (Girginov and Parry 2005: 120–1; Gratton and Taylor 1988: 55). But, whatever the fijigure – and much depends on the methodology used – there seems to be basic agreement about the positive balance.

5.3. Socio-Cultural Legacies Here the impact is more intangible and therefore even more difffijicult to quantify, but two aspects seem to have been important to the Korean government in the run-up to the Olympics: the promotion of a national sporting culture and the promotion of traditional culture – both of which were intended to combine to create a raised sense of national pride. The fijirst involved effforts by the government and the NOC to raise public

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awareness of sport in general, by which was meant both participation and watching, and the Olympic Games and Olympic sports in particular. In 1981, South Korea had no ministerial-level government body dealing with sports, so the government of President Chun tried hard to promote the concept of a ‘Sports Republic’. A Ministry of Sports was established in March 1982, with Roh Tae Woo becoming the fijirst Minister of Sport, fijinally severing the direct links with the Education Ministry that had been in operation since 1946. Ten separate divisions were created within the new Ministry, covering aspects such as policy planning, sports promotion, sports science, and international sporting links (Ju 2008: 203). Funding was poured into identifying promising athletes across the country and training them using the best methods available, under a new so-called ‘Dream-Tree Plan’ (Yoon 2010). The Korean athletes’ unprecedented successes in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, when they won six gold medals compared to only one in all previous Olympics combined (thereby enabling Korea to feature for the fijirst time ever in the ‘top ten’ in the medal rankings) seemed to cast them as ‘national warriors’ in the eyes of the media and the wider public, creating a new and intense manifestation of sporting nationalism (Cho 2009: 354–7: Shin 2007: 18). The chaebols were also encouraged to contribute funding and even leadership to both the new professional sports leagues as well as the Olympic-related sports. Indeed, at one stage in the mid-1980s twenty-fijive out of thirtythree national sports associations were headed by chaebol leaders (Hong 2011: 984). The successful hosting of the 1986 Asian Games became an important ‘test-run’ for the Olympics, not just in terms of Korean athletes doing well but also, and more importantly, in fijine-tuning the organizational and logistical management skills necessary for the larger-scale Olympics (Koh E. 2007). Although elite athlete programmes remained a priority, resources gradually began to be devoted to new ‘sports for all’ programmes. Finally, a ‘new era of professional sport opened’ (Ha and Mangan 2003: 233). Before 1980 the only professional sports in South Korea were boxing and golf. A professional baseball league, however, came into being for the fijirst time in March 1982; professional football began the following year, as did professional championships for traditional wrestling (ssirum). Baseball in particular drew large numbers of people to sport and rapidly became a kind of national pastime and, indeed, nowadays is often described as the national sport, but it also acted as a form of ‘diversion’ from the political troubles of the time. Indeed, according to Bang-chool Kim, political motives were actually the driving force: ‘professional baseball was not an

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inspiration for improving society but an opiate diversion to cover up social, economic and political problems’ (Kim 2001: 174). Similar motivations have been ascribed to the creation of the other professional sports leagues at this time. Ha Nam-gil and J.A. Mangan, however, see more of a mix of motives: ‘Politicians furthered, encouraged and developed Korean sport for both altruistic and ulterior purposes’ during this period (Ha and Mangan 2003: 235). Eui Hang Shin supports this contention, arguing that the Chun administration’s perspective was that ‘sports would play an important role in mitigating political conflicts and integrating the society’, but notes that, given the rise of the middle class in the expanding Korean economy, a ‘market for professional sports as entertainment’ was developing anyway (Shin 2007: 16, 21). Football had been a basically amateur sport, played mostly by the military, colleges, and company teams (one of the most successful teams, Hallelujah, had been formed by evangelical Christians), but the popularity of baseball as a spectator sport after professionalization seems to have pushed the South Korean Football Association to go down the same road. Five of the initial eight professional league teams were sponsored by chaebol or large companies which had been playing key roles in South Korea’s economic transformation (Murray 1995: 151–2). Indeed, as Eui Hang Shin argues, from the beginning of these various professional leagues, not solely football, the chaebol had an advantage since only they could affford the substantial costs of organizing and supporting professional sports teams. The desire of the Ministry of Sports to ensure that these new professional leagues got offf to a stable and successful start also inclined the bureaucrats to encourage the chaebol to become fijinancially involved (Shin 2007: 16). Regardless of what motivations were behind this promotion of sport, including professional sport, public interest was certainly aroused and the Korean media fed into this trend. The amount of sports shown on Korean television increased signifijicantly during the 1980s and overall the increased ‘professionalism’ of sport was noticeable (Larson and Park 1993: 156–9, 216; Ok 2007: 324–5). At the same time, the government and the NOC wanted to use the Olympics to show-case traditional Korean culture, primarily through the opening and closing ceremonies, but also through related exhibitions and performances during the months before and after the actual games. Nonetheless, the opening ceremony was regarded by the Korean organizers as the key moment, with the music, dances and other performances combining ‘something Korean and something cosmopolitan’ to

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demonstrate the Olympic theme of ‘Harmony and Progress’, to use the words of the SLOOC President Park Seh-jik (Park 1991: 31, 43, 74–6). This approach certainly in the longer run benefijited those traditional cultural industries and performers. At the same time it fijitted into a cultural policy that has been critiqued as representing the ‘3S’, which were seen as standing for ‘sports, sex and screen’; providing ‘outlets for enjoyment’ to prevent the urban public from disrupting the government’s activities. Although, as Lisa Kim Davis has argued, the logic of this leisure and arts policy programme was only apparent with hindsight, the cultivation of ‘homegrown leisure industries and …..indigenous elements of entertainment’ did serve to become the ‘structural precursor’ of hallyu, the so-called ‘Korean wave’ of fijilms, dramas and pop music that are so popular in Asia, and even globally, today (Davis 2011: 112–16). For ordinary Koreans their initial reticence early in the 1980s, when many still saw the Olympics as being a ‘military show’, shifted as the event came nearer into a general feeling that for reasons of national pride the Olympics should be held successfully. Massive television coverage of the Olympic events undoubtedly contributed to the ordinary Koreans’ sense of pride, even if their direct involvement as spectators had been more limited. Enthusiasm for the Games was not to fijind spontaneous expression on the streets in the way that the later 2002 World Cup was to do. Indeed, given that the country was only just coming out of an era in which governmental power had been used to strongly discourage street activities unless approved in advance, the ‘festival’ aspect of the Seoul Olympics was perhaps not surprisingly rather muted (MacAloon 2006: 24–5). Some observers, such as journalist Michael Breen, were less enamoured of Korean behaviour: ‘As soon as the Olympic flame was lit, the Koreans began behaving abominably’, not least in incensed Korean responses to perceived slights administered by the American athletes and media (Breen 1998: 188–9). However, externally, as James Larson and Park Seung-soo have suggested, ‘there is good reason to believe that the overall impact of television surrounding the 1988 Olympics as an event not only helped to change South Korea’s image around the world but also began to change it in a positive direction’ (Larson and Park 1993: 231).

5.4. Political-Diplomatic Breakthroughs At the time of the award of the Olympics to Seoul in 1981, thirty-seven countries with NOCs did not have formal diplomatic relations with South

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Korea and there was concern in South Korea and indeed within the IOC that, perhaps out of solidarity with North Korea, all or some of the NOCs of these countries might boycott the Games. In the end, North Korea had very few friends joining it in boycotting the Games. The key North Korean allies that became the focus of pre-Olympic discussions and lobbying were undoubtedly the Soviet Union, China, and, because of its sporting prowess, East Germany. From early 1986, informal contacts between the SLOOC and Soviet sports offfijicials began, with the blessing of the IOC, while several East European states, whose athletes had missed out on the 1984 Olympics because of the boycott, also put pressure on the Soviet Union to agree to participate. By late 1987, the Soviet Union, while still quibbling over some small details on security, had basically agreed to participate; in fact, Soviet offfijicials had hinted to Samaranch as early as mid-1985 that they would attend. In March 1987, East Germany sent its sports minister to Seoul; he promised that East German athletes would be competing in Seoul. China, however, had moved even faster towards South Korea, not only because it saw increasing economic advantages coming from closer links but also because Beijing wanted to be the host of the 1990 Asian Games, which required that all member countries of the Olympic Council of Asia be allowed to send athletes to the Games. As early as 1984, senior Chinese offfijicials had committed Chinese athletes to competing not only in the 1986 Asian Games in Seoul, but also in the 1988 Olympics. In June 1988, three months before the opening, China sent a senior Politburo leader to Pyongyang to politely but fijirmly tell Kim Il Sung that China wanted the Games to run smoothly. So, although these communist states did encourage South Korea to make some concessions to North Korea over cohosting, they also made it clear that such concessions were not a prerequisite but rather that such steps would make it easier for them to defend their decision to participate when talking with North Korea (Park 1991: 25–31; Pound 1994: 296–7; Chung 2007: 35; Radchenko 2011). But for South Korea, the Olympics were crucial not just for securing global sporting participation but also for acting as a springboard to possible diplomatic recognition from socialist allies of the North. As the ‘cultural politics’ part of this strategy, the SLOOC had, for example, specifijically invited East European sculptors to contribute to the outdoor Sculpture Park. Some sporting equipment from Eastern Europe was also utilized. Sporting offfijicials from East European countries visiting Seoul in the runup to the Olympics also suggested that exchanges could be widened to other forms of cultural, social and economic contacts. President Roh Tae

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Woo himself added to the momentum by setting out in early July 1988 his so-called ‘nordpolitik’ policy. Modelled on the earlier West German approach to its eastern neighbour and its allies, the South aimed to establish ties with Soviet bloc countries on the basis of pragmatism and economic benefijits (Cha 2009: 84). Diplomatic contacts did indeed follow soon after. The Soviet Union opened a temporary consular offfijice in Seoul for the duration of the Games, housed its athletes in a large ship in Incheon harbour for the duration of the Games, and perhaps most signifijicantly on the day before the opening ceremony Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev gave a major speech in Krasnoyarsk in which he specifijically mentioned improving relations with South Korea (Cha 2009: 89–90). Also on the eve of the Games, Hungary agreed to the establishment of permanent missions, which were a precursor to the formal recognition of South Korea a few months later; this was followed in subsequent months by recognition by most of the other East European states (Oberdorfer 2001: 189–91). Although the Soviet recognition of South Korea in 1990 and the similar Chinese move in 1992 followed some time after the 1988 Olympics, the interactions before and during the Olympics certainly helped to develop greater trust and understanding between South Koreans and Chinese and Soviet offfijicials. While Barry Gills has argued that the South Korean diplomatic breakthrough in Eastern Europe ‘was more of an unexpected windfall than the result of a particular efffort’, primarily because of the sudden changes in political atmosphere in Eastern Europe as communist governments faltered and then collapsed, South Korean diplomats have claimed more foresight in South Korean policy-making and have been convinced that the Olympic Games were the ‘decisive turning point’ for improving relations with the communist governments (Gills 1996: 223–4). In the view of Victor Cha, ‘sport played a critical role in facilitating the breakthrough in Soviet-ROK relations’ and in the South Korea-China case ‘a fortuitous set of events surrounding the tenth and eleventh Asian Games in 1986 and 1990…..helped to facilitate the transition from largely economic cooperation in the 1980s to political cooperation and eventual normalization’ (Cha 2009: 88, 93).3

3 Cha is referring not just to China’s decision to send its athletes to the 1986 Seoul Asian Games, but also to South Korea’s enthusiastic support – political, logistical and fijinancial – for the 1990 Beijing Asian Games at a time when China was sufffering under international  sanctions after 1989 massacre of pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square (Cha 2009: 94–6).

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In addition to the diplomatic kudos, the Seoul Olympics were to have an unexpected but benefijicial impact on domestic politics and serve the cause of democratization. In the 1980s, the authoritarian government of President Chun, a general who had seized power through a coup d’état before shedding his uniform, came under increasing pressure from domestic advocates of constitutional and democratic reform. These conflicts reached a head in early 1987 with massive street demonstrations and clashes with police, particularly after Chun tried to use the Olympics as an excuse for delaying any democratic reforms until after the Games had fijinished. Consequently, one of the ruling party leaders and prospective presidential candidate, Roh Tae Woo, reversed policy in June 1987 by declaring a raft of democratizing measures that met most of the demands of the demonstrators and opposition politicians (Cotton 1993). As the demonstrations began to subside, Chun no longer felt the need to consider the imposition of martial law which would almost certainly have led to the IOC moving the Games elsewhere. Roh, who had previously served for three years as the President of the SLOOC, then won the next presidential election in December 1987 after the opposition movement could not decide on a single unifying candidate and in February 1988 the fijirst peaceful transfer of power in South Korea’s political history occurred. Roh himself had argued in a letter to IOC President Samaranch in June 1987 that there was a ‘consensus of opinion in Korea that welcomes the Games’ (Pound 1994: 238). Public opinion polls did suggest that most Koreans across the political spectrum, even amongst the pro-democracy opposition, did want to make a success of the Olympics. The only opposition came from radicals who saw the Olympics both as a political project of a military dictatorship and as a diversion of resources which could be better used for social welfare. Consequently, there was widespread relief that Roh’s compromises had removed any doubts that the IOC might move the Games elsewhere. The words of two senior sports offfijicials at the centre of the arrangements for the Seoul Olympics are worth quoting in this context. IOC Vice-President Pound reflected on the external pressures that the Koreans felt, writing that, ‘there can, in retrospect, be little doubt that the evolution of democracy was accelerated considerably as a result of the effforts of South Korea to respond to the expectations of the rest of the world’, while SLOOC President Park was more concerned about internal political dynamics when he wrote, ‘under the influence of the Olympics, the extreme rightist camp turned somewhat more liberal and democratic in their political activities’ (Pound 1994: 322; Park 1991: 170). The Olympic factor was not the

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only one at play in the dramatic months of the fijirst half of 1987, but undoubtedly it was one of the more important ones. As such it contributed a signifijicant legacy to South Korea.

5.5. The North Korean Dimension Crucially, the Olympics helped to underpin a changing perception amongst South Koreans – both policy-making elites and the public – who had been brought up on strong anti-communist propaganda during the decades since the Korean War that it was indeed possible to work with countries with difffering political systems, such as those within the socialist bloc. Paradoxically, the Olympics – or, at least the run up to them – did not do anything to either improve North-South Korean relations or improve South Korean impressions of the North. As discussed above, the North had objected fijirst to the Seoul being chosen as the host, describing it as ‘an insecure city…dominated by a warlike atmosphere’, but after the special IOC meeting in 1984 had re-endorsed Seoul, the North turned to a campaign for co-hosting the Games. Over the course of three years of tortuous negotiations, the North made a series of demands, some more unrealistic than others, which angered and annoyed the South Korean NOC, the government, media and the public. The North received some support from a very small number of radicals within South Korea, but no sympathy from other South Koreans, particularly after North Korean complicity in the fatal bombing of a Korean Airlines airliner offf the Burmese coast in November 1987 was revealed (Hill 1992: 204–207). The US and South Korean governments had been concerned about security threats and, indeed, rather than suspend the annual ‘Team Spirit’ joint military exercises in order to reduce tensions, it was decided to go ahead with the spring 1988 exercises (Radchenko 2011). Contingency plans for bringing in US troops from Japan in the case of emergency were made, but the US government was reassured by the Soviet leadership that there would be no (North Korean) terrorism during the Games. Constrained by the participation of Soviet, Chinese and other allies’ athletes, North Korea did nothing and the Games passed offf without any security incidents (Kang 2011: 18–19). In considering the North’s own sporting development in the mid/ late-1980s this cannot be separated from the internal political developments, in particular the consolidation of Kim Jong Il’s position as successor to his father. Coded North Korean media references to the ‘Party Centre’ in the 1970s were replaced by more open adulation after the 1980

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Sixth KWP Congress, which saw Kim Jong Il publicly installed as his father’s successor. Having been determined to install someone who not only would perpetuate his revolutionary generation’s ideology but would remain totally loyal, Kim Il Sung allowed his son to play an increasingly important role during the 1980s in both interpreting and fijine-tuning the juche ideology and in implementing policy decisions (Cotton 1994; Buzo 1999: 105–23). Against the background of this familial succession process that was highly unusual for a socialist state (only Romania seemed to becoming close to a similar process prior to its 1989 collapse and, arguably, Cuba in more recent times), calls for unity and devotion to the leaders became emphasized. Jung Woo Lee and Alan Garnier argue that during the 1980s, especially from the late 1980s, nationalism in North Korea became more pronounced with the nationalistic element of the juche philosophy becoming ‘increasingly radical’ and ‘ethnocentric’. In part this was due to the rising economic problems and dislocations which the regime faced – and which were to become even more pronounced in the 1990s as natural disasters combined with economic policy rigidities to create negative growth. In part this also reflected the shock which Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il must have felt at the dramatic political and ideological changes which took place in Eastern Europe and the need to avoid any similar tendency occurring in the North (Lee and Garnier 2009: 393–4). As a result, elements of this ‘Korea is best’ nationalism became embedded not just in everyday life but also in North Korean sporting practice (Lee and Garnier 2009: 397, 406). Certainly, during the 1980s, there were signs of increased sporting activity in the North through participation – and success – in international sports competitions. In 1985, at the time of North Korean men’s and women’s table tennis teams defeating their respective southern counterparts in the 38th WTTF Championships in Sweden, a North Korean sporting offfijicial revealed that table tennis had been designated a ‘strategic  sport’ with over 100,000 players competing annually in regional and national championships in order to be chosen for the national teams (Clough 1987: 321). A comparative study by the South’s National Unifijication Board in 1984 actually concluded that the North’s athletes were superior in gymnastics, men’s shooting, skating and women’s medium-distance track events, while South Koreans held the edge in basketball, volleyball, tennis, boxing, swimming, judo, wrestling and archery (Clough 1987: 322). In one of the longest policy statements ever made public about sports development in the North, in May 1986, Kim Jong Il gave his frank

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assessment on both the ‘big strides’ that had been made in popularizing physical education and sports and the tasks ahead (Kim J.I. 1986). For Kim, sports and physical education clearly had functional roles: they ‘contribute to the wealth and development of the country, a strong national defence, the people’s health and national prosperity. ……[and also] bring honour to the country and promote friendly relations with many countries’. As such, sport was ‘decisive to the destiny of the country and the nation’. Unlike in capitalist countries where sport is ‘a means of amusement and making money’, in North Korea it helps towards ‘building up people’s strength and realizing the people’s cause of Chajusong [true will or independence]’. After extolling the virtues of physical education and sport, Kim went on to give advice to various sectors of society: physical education at schools should be ‘intensifijied’ because it would stimulate ‘the growth in stature of the pupils’ and teach them ‘at least one sporting skill’; the quality of school sports training should be improved by more responsible teachers; enterprises and cooperative farms should organize and set aside times for exercise and games; more sports facilities should be built in provincial cities and towns; the KWP’s organizations should take charge of organizing physical training for workers; ‘scientifijic standards’ should be used for selecting sportsmen and women for each event in international competitions; television programmes and newspapers should highlight distinguished sports personalities and special diets should be constructed to help athletes’ bodies develop (‘a lot of meat, oil, many eggs and plenty of chocolate’). Despite its inability to secure a role in the 1988 Olympics, North Korea did continue at least for a while its policy of trying to expand its hosting of other international, albeit smaller-scale, sporting events. In fact from the early 1980s through until at least the 1990s, when fijinancial considerations began to impact and caused a drastic curtailment of such events, North Korea annually held between eight and fourteen small-scale international sports events, such as the Mangyongdae Prize International Marathon and the Baekdusan World Figure Skating Festival (Yonhap 2003: 490). Kim Jong Il himself had emphasized the importance of such locally-held international events to enable sportsmen and women to improve their skills (Kim J.I. 1986). Of particular importance, because it was at least in part designed to act as a kind of compensation for failing either to stop the Seoul Olympics or to get a slice of the action, the North successfully bid for (in 1987) and hosted the 13th World Festival of Youth and Students (WFYS), a kind of ‘socialist Olympics’ or ‘sports-and ideology bash’ in July 1989 (Martin 2004:

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343; Harrold 2004: 184–91; for the forthright and amusing impressions of a British participant see Daniels 1991: 38–75). Involving sports, cultural and political events, this WFYS was attended by about 22,000 people from 177 countries, making it the largest in WFYS history in terms of participating countries. The South Korean government tried hard to prevent participation by its nationals, but one female college student, Lim Sookyung did attend and achieved some notoriety as the nicknamed ‘Flower of Unifijication’; Kim Il Sung even rose to his feet to applaud her when she entered the stadium at the opening ceremony as the sole representative of her country. Ms Lim, ‘eccentric and brave girl’ that she was, was promptly arrested on her return to the South overland via Panmunjom (Daniels 1991: 61).4 In preparation for this Festival, the North not only constructed a new highway from Pyongyang to Kaesong, but constructed a massive series of sporting complexes in Chongchun (Youth) Street in the centre of Pyongyang. Apart from the 150,000-seat Rungrado Stadium, a new swimming pool and four gymnasia for various sports were all built within a remarkably short time. When associated shopping and housing developments were added in, it was likely the total costs of hosting this event were well over US$4 billion and some estimates went as high as $9 billion, quite probably a signifijicant drain on North Korea’s fijinancial reserves (Lee H-S 2001: 143–5; McCormack 2004: 87). Initially, the construction of these facilities could have been aimed at being used in any co-hosting of the 1988 Olympics (Cornell 2002: 89, 100), but, as one foreign resident of Pyongyang noted at the time, they were mostly completed after the Olympic Games period though in time for the WFYS (Holloway 1988, chapter 13). Known locally as the ‘Sports Village’, Chongchun street now has nine gymnasia, each for a diffferent sport (Springer 2003: 102). Apart from the huge drain on the North Korean economy, the events themselves did not always go according to (North Korean) plans. Since it was being held, through an accident of timing, not long after the Tiananmen Square massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing in early June 1989, some athletes from some West European states felt incensed enough to hold up signs ‘questioning human rights policies in North Korea and in China’ (Martin 2004: 344). Not long before the Olympics, President Roh had announced his ‘northern diplomacy’ (nordpolitik), indicating a renewed interest in dialogue 4 The South Korean Ministry of Unifijication maintains a small photographic exhibition in one of its buildings on the southern side of the DMZ at Panmunjom. Lim’s return is highlighted in one of the photographs.

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and exchanges with the North (including sports exchanges) and offfering support for North Korea’s improvement of relations with Western states as long as the North did not oppose South Korea developing closer ties to other communist states (Park 1993). It was the latter part of the ‘northern diplomacy’ – the South establishing better relations with the North’s socialist allies – that bore fruit, while the other stated objective, improving inter-Korean relations through dialogue, stuttered. It may well have been that Roh, like his predecessor, had no real inclination or expectation that inter-Korean relations could be improved at that time. Achieving a successful Olympics was paramount and a humiliated North Korea was left to sulk. In the view of some scholars, the Olympics came to serve as ‘a calculated political slap across the face of the despised North Korea’ (Mangan et al. 2011: 2357). After the Olympics, which did pass offf without any disruption whatsoever from the North, sports offfijicials from North and South did not meet again until in late 1989-early 1990 they discussed, ultimately unsuccessfully, a joint team for the 1990 Beijing Asian Games, but serious negotiations between North and South on other issues were intermittent and frustrating at least until prime-ministerial talks began in late 1990. One step forward and one step backward was to remain a characteristic of the South-North dialogue throughout the 1990s. 5.6. Enduring Legacies At the beginning of the 1980s much of the world still knew little about Korea. Images of the Korean War (no doubt reinforced by the popularity of the M*A*S*H television series) and of more recent clashes between police and demonstrators obscured the changing realities of what was becoming a major economic power. Psychological distance compounded geographical remoteness for non-Asians and despite the growing presence of Korean businessmen operating in North American, European, Middle Eastern and South-east Asian markets, the Koreans – and their culture – were little known or understood outside North-east Asia. It was, therefore, not surprising that the Koreans saw in the Olympics a way not only to symbolize their leap from ‘Third World’ to First World’ in economic terms but also to propagate a new image of their country around the world. The Seoul Olympic slogan of ‘The World to Seoul, Seoul to the World’ was designed to encapsulate these ideas. The day after the closing ceremony one of the leading English-language newspapers in South Korea ran the headline ‘We Did It!’. This sentiment,

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which combined pride with a sense of relief that nothing major had gone wrong, was widely shared amongst Koreans. As hosts, both Seoul’s and South Korea’s images undoubtedly did improve, especially given their relatively unknown position in global thinking beforehand. South Korea became to be seen as a country with a colourful culture and as being a safe and pleasant place to visit. At both the domestic and international levels, the Seoul Olympics provided defijinite and broadly positive legacies for South Korea. Indeed, for the Koreans, the combination of the economic, socio-cultural and political-diplomatic dimensions discussed above did result in what the Seoul Olympic Museum’s own displays describe as the ‘foundation of an advanced nation’ and an ‘upgraded international status’ for South Korea. At the same time, the Seoul Olympics also bequeathed a legacy to the Olympic movement. After the ideological confrontations between the ‘West’ and the ‘East’ during the previous two Olympiads in Moscow and Los Angeles, the Seoul Olympics managed to give a diffferent meaning to the terms ‘East’ and ‘West’, not only imbuing them with cultural and geographical as well as political overtones, but also bringing them together in a way which enabled the Olympic movement to move forward. Yet, in retrospect, perhaps the most pervasive legacy for the Koreans themselves is that the Seoul Olympics and the ‘Olympic spirit’ can still serve as a means to appeal to collective memory and collective mobilization whenever the government and people have to wrestle with another major challenge to the country’s self-confijidence and image. As such, in this new century too (and in particular as the country moves towards the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in 2018), it can be expected that the recourse to that ‘Olympic spirit’ will continue to retain its potency in political and cultural, not simply sporting, discourses within South Korea.

CHAPTER SIX

REACTION AND RECONCILIATION The dream of a joint Korean sporting team – a dream shared by the IOC and many Koreans – continued to remain just that, a dream, throughout the years after 1988. In fact, only twice, in the same year of 1991 were joint teams ever fijielded in international sporting competitions. Not coincidentally, this achievement came at a time of renewed North-South political dialogue. The phenomenon of resuscitating bilateral sporting links in parallel with reviving political exchanges and the concomitant downgrading of contacts as political relations deteriorated was to be repeated several times during the 1990s. 6.1. Coping with Global Change 1989, the year after the Seoul Olympics, was of course a traumatic one for international relations as the Berlin Wall fell, most of the East European states collapsed politically and democratic change came to most of North Korea’s European socialist allies. The Romanian collapse may have been the most traumatic for Kim, given the manner in which an indigenous personality-style socialism with strong echoes of the North Korean model had earlier been constructed (Buzo 1999: 182). Kim Il Sung was determined that such an eventuality should not befall his system (ideological liberalization would not be permitted in any sense), and one facet of his response was to move once again towards the South. Just as dramatic changes in the international system in 1971 had fijirst pushed the two Koreas into a bilateral agreement, so did the dramatic events of 1989 presage another round of dialogue. In his January 1990 New Year address, Kim called for ‘total openness of both North and South’, but this was followed by the usual diplomatic fencing from both sides before agreement was reached that in September 1990 for the fijirst time ever high-level talks would begin at the prime-ministerial level. Diffferences of emphasis and objectives emerged early on, since South Korea wanted to start with exchanges and confijidence-building measures, while the North wanted a declaration on non-aggression fijirst before any exchanges. Yet the two sides continued talking intermittently: three times in late 1990 and again from October 1991

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(Shinn 1991: 114–22; Foster-Carter 1992: 55–7). In September 1991, overcoming a long-standing North Korean reluctance, the two Koreas fijinally entered the United Nations as separate states and later in 1991 the pace of inter-Korean contacts picked up and at December’s meeting an ‘Agreement on Reconciliation, Non-aggression, Cooperation and Exchange’ was signed (and ratifijied at the February 1992 meeting). The fijirst ever such agreement between the two Koreas, it included a pledge of non-aggression and non-interference and a range of concrete policy steps and a timetable for implementation (Foster-Carter 1992: 82–3). Sports were amongst the various exchanges planned. Also in December 1991, following public statements earlier in the summer by both the United States and South Korea that nuclear weapons were no longer present on South Korean territory, the two sides concluded a non-nuclear pact: Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. However, although the North then went on to sign an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which would have allowed for inspections of its nuclear facilities, it was heightened international suspicions that the North might be seeking to build a nuclear bomb that were to impact on the North-South dialogue as 1992 proceeded (Foster-Carter 1992: 82–4). In parallel with the mood of inter-Korean reconciliation in 1990–91, however, sporting contacts too achieved a breakthrough. According to data from the South Korean National Unifijication Board, between 1988 and 1992 representatives of the two governments or related organizations met 160 times, of which twenty-three were related to sports exchanges (Oh 1997: 28). Several frustrating rounds of talks about forming a joint Korean team for the 1990 Beijing Asian Games were held in late 1989-early 1990, but agreement barely went beyond a range of minor points (BBC 1990a, 1990b). Both sides accused the other of making ‘unjust demands’ and the talks fijinally broke down over the North’s demand that the South basically agree to send a joint team or none at all, which upset the South (Buzo 1999: 181, 277). The North’s dislike of the joint US-South Korean ‘Team Spirit’ military exercises in February 1990 provided an excuse for suspending further contacts. However, an informal joint ‘cheering team’ was created and, more importantly, the Asian Games provided a venue for informal meetings between North Korean Vice-President Li Jong Ok and Park Chul Un, an influential political fijixer close to then President Roh Tae Woo, as well as between sports ministers from the two sides. Consequently, in October 1990, the South Korean sports minister, Chung Dong-suh, visited Pyongyang and his counterpart visited Seoul while two North-South

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Reunifijication Soccer Matches were played in Pyongyang and Seoul (in a sense reviving what had been the pre-1945 tradition of soccer matches between the two cities, though now between two countries). Fortuitously or otherwise, the North won the fijirst game in Pyongyang and the South won the return match in Seoul. This in turn led on to decisions on arranging selection matches and joint training for the creation of joint teams in 1991 for the 41st WTTF Championships in Japan and the 6th Junior World Football Championships held in Portugal (Jhe 2003: 162–3; Foster-Carter 1992: 36, 54). January and February 1991 saw several rounds of negotiations for the fijirst event, the table-tennis teams for the WTTF Championships in April. After concessions coming mostly from the South side, it was agreed that joint training would take place in Japan, the teams would be selected through joint competitions, and the Korean delegation would be headed by a North Korean while a South Korean would head up the later football squad (Korea Newsreview, 23 February 1991). The joint teams performed creditably, with the women’s team defeating the Chinese team to win the women’s championships. Chang Ung, Secretary-General of the North Korean NOC, emotionally described this victory as ‘the biggest moment ever for our divided nation’ (Korea Newsreview, 4 May 1991), while the Yonhap News Agency’s later report exulted that this joint team was successful in ‘knocking the previously invincible Chinese team offf their pedestal’ (Yonhap 1992: 267). One foreign observer in Pyongyang at the time noted that ‘the victory was greeted with delirium by the people of North Korea’ (Harrold 2004: 274). The football squad proved much less controversial to pick, with a squad of eighteen (equal numbers from North and South) chosen after two trial matches, although the selection process had been slowed down by the North Korean side’s decision to cancel, though only temporarily, a trip South by its players because of the beating to death of a South Korean student by police (Shinn, 1991: 120; Korea Newsreview, 18 May 1991). This combined team also performed well before going out to Argentina at the quarter-fijinal stage. South Korean and North Korean citizens were able to follow on radio and television as the games were relayed live by satellite (Yonhap 1992: 267). Nevertheless, the joint teams were the result of ‘government contacts rather than purely civilian exchanges’ and little in the way of real sporting exchanges followed; they became one-offf events (Jonsson 2006: 119–20). They also proved costly events from the South Korean perspective in that the South bore all the expenses: 164 million won for the WTTF championships and 786 million won for the football participation (Choi 2002: 113).

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Moreover, the North was not above using this cooperation to make another political point in the context of the South’s mounting campaign for UN membership, arguing in April 1991 that the South was being ‘splittist’ on the UN membership issue in contrast to its sporting agreements on a single name, team, etc. (Shinn 1991: 119–20). Although it is not clear how reliable rumours were that the North Korean players and stafff were ‘too impressed’ by the liberal thoughts and life-style of their southern counterparts (Park 2007: 96), the defection of a well-known North Korean judoka, Li Chang Su, who had been a silver medallist at the 1990 Asian Games, in August 1991 efffectively brought to an end any further discussions about a joint team for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics as the North suspended the talks in retaliation (Diplomacy, August 1992: 20).1 Earlier in 1991, Park Chul Un, who was the nephew of President Roh’s wife and was frequently deployed during the late 1980s as an unofffijicial emissary of the President in establishing contacts with socialist states, had elaborated on his vision of sports exchanges with the North, which he anticipated would consist of three stages: creation of a single delegation for the 1992 Olympics, a sports exchange treaty, and fijinally a merging of the two NOCs (Korea Newsreview, 8 June 1991). Although the December 1991 North-South Agreement did include a reference to sports, there was not to be a separate, specifijic agreement solely for sports and in reality not even the initial stage of Park’s ideal plan – a joint team at Barcelona – could be achieved. As North-South political relations again became tetchy in early 1992, so the dream of a joint team for the Barcelona Olympics faded away. Both Koreas did send athletes to the 1992 Olympics; the Olympics were probably most memorable for South Korea, which through Hwang Young-cho’s determined running in the fijinal stages was able to win the marathon for the fijirst time since Sohn’s historic victory in the 1936 Olympics. 6.2. The Nervous 1990s The early 1990s were to become not just a crucial period of change in the international situation thanks to the end of the Cold War, but they also 1 In an interview with Reuters in March 2012, Li recalled that he was sent to work in a coal mine after the Beijing Asian Games because he had lost to a South Korean judoka in the fijinal. But, fortunately, he had one admirer who was powerful enough to ensure that the talented athlete could compete again, in the form of Jang Song Thaek, the brother-in-law of Kim Jong Il. Recalled to compete in an international competition in Spain in 1991, Li then defected (Jung 2012).

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saw important political transitions in both Koreas. In the South, the 1992 presidential election saw the election of Kim Young-sam, the fijirst democratically-elected civilian president for over three decades, albeit a once leading opposition fijigure who had joined the ruling party of President Roh in 1990 as part of a ‘grand conservative coalition’ (Oh 1999: 116–30). Kim was initially very popular, building on his long-standing reputation as a fijighter for democracy and advocating reforms not just in the economy but also more broadly in society. By 1994, he had begun to develop a new concept, called segyehwa (globalization), which implied opening up all aspects of Korean society to global influences and standards. Idealistic and vague as this concept was, some of the measures undertaken in the economic fijield were to come back to bite the Kim administration in 1997 as South Korea became one of the countries most afffected by the fijinancial crisis which swept through the Asian region. The North, by contrast, experienced its fijirst ever transition of power when the Great Leader Kim Il Sung suddenly died in July 1994 to be succeeded by his son, the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il. Although this occurred at a moment of particular international tension, to be discussed below, the transition was marked by stability and continuity; not surprising given the immense resources devoted to ensuring the son’s training and positioning over the previous decade and more. Although Kim Jong Il adopted a policy of ‘mourning’ for his late father for three years before he offfijicially took the titles of General Secretary of the KWP and Chairman of the National Defence Commission in October 1997, in practice he was clearly in control of all the party, government and military organs of power from the time of his father’s death. In a 1998 constitutional amendment, his Defence Commission chairmanship was declared to be ‘the highest post of the state’, while the president’s post was written out of the constitution in memory of Kim Il Sung, who was designated the country’s ‘eternal president’ (Yonhap 2003: 103–17). Kim Jong Il was also quick, after his father’s death, to reafffijirm the adherence to the principles of juche, since any abandonment of it as a basic political principle would anyway have undercut his own political legitimacy, tied as it was to his father and his father’s legacy. The ‘new’ North Korean leadership attributed the failure and collapse of the Soviet Union and East European states to their insufffijicient adherence to socialist principles and inability to educate young people into the ideals of socialism, a mistake which North Korea was intent on avoiding (Armstrong 1997: 21–3). For all of Kim Young-sam’s aspirations on coming into offfijice to achieve a breakthrough in relations with the North on his own account, he was

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soon to fijind himself in conflict with the two Kims in the North over the nuclear issue. From the late 1980s, the US and South Korean governments had been becoming suspicious that North Korea might be secretly reprocessing nuclear fuel and even producing nuclear weapons. Despite the 1991 North-South accords and a decision to suspend the annual joint US-South Korean ‘Team Spirit’ exercises in 1992, the North prevaricated over fully opening up its nuclear reactor sites to the inspections demanded by the IAEA, which requested a special inspection regime. This led on to North Korean threats in March 1993 to withdraw from the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty (NPT), which was the foundation of the international community’s effforts to restrain the spread of weapons-usable nuclear materials. This tactic achieved one North Korean objective: negotiations with the United States, which dragged on frustratingly during 1993–94. Talk of sanctions and even pre-emptive military strikes hovered over the talks and, at one stage in mid-1994, the situation did come close to war until former US President Jimmy Carter’s mission to Pyongyang brokered a deal with Kim Il Sung, which was then formalized by his son in the US-North Korean Framework Agreement of October 1994 (Sigal 1998; Gills 1996: 234–49; Downs 1999: 212–52; ElBaradei 2011: 37–47). This agreement provided for international assistance from a newly-created consortium (later to be called KEDO, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization) to build and supply two nuclear power plants for North Korea. Although South Korea was to become the major contributor to KEDO, the Kim administration had been rather sidelined by the bilateral US-North Korean negotiations and throughout the mid-1990s the South’s approach to the North resembled a kind of zig-zagging in policy-making, in which domestic concerns – and public mood swings – became paramount. The North, on the other hand, did its best to exploit such diffferences between the United States and South Korea, even though its increasingly fragile food security situation made it willing to participate in dialogue in the expectation of humanitarian aid rewards. Consequently, US President Bill Clinton and Kim Young-sam in April 1996 did come up with a proposal for four-power talks including China along with North Korea to discuss the replacement of the existing armistice with a permanent peace treaty, but the fijirst such meeting at the plenary-level did not occur until December 1997 when Kim Young-sam was already a lame duck (Downs 1999: 267–71). Kim’s policies towards the North, therefore, ended in frustration with very limited progress achieved. Against the background of the nuclear crisis and the subsequent complicated international diplomacy, it would not be surprising to note that

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there was efffectively an eight-year break in inter-Korean sports exchanges in the 1990s. Both Koreas continued to participate in the summer and winter Olympics, though participation by the North in the 1996 Atlanta summer Olympics reportedly only came after former president Carter had sent a personal letter to Pyongyang asking the leadership to reconsider an earlier decision to miss the Games, as well as regional games (except for the 1994 Asian Games held in Japan, with which North Korea had no diplomatic relations). But, there were no serious discussions about forming joint teams. At the same time, while South Korea did make its way to the fijinals of the World Cup in 1990, 1994 and 1998 though without ever seriously threatening to advance beyond the initial group stages, the North actually stopped competing in football World Cup qualifijiers for nearly a decade after being eliminated at an early stage from the 1994 World Cup qualifying tournament. North Koreans have developed a strong interest in football. Kim Jong Il himself told senior KWP offfijicials in 1989: ‘Football is the basis of sport and it suits the physical constitution of our people. When our football skills are developed and our players beat the teams of other countries in international events, we will be able to demonstrate the might of our country. Sport authorities should exert every efffort to develop our football skills’ (Lee and Garnier, 2009: 398). No doubt noting how its rivals, Japan and South Korea, were moving towards the professionalization of their football structures, in the early 1990s the North had indeed tried to raise the standard of its men’s football team. First, it established the Pyongyang Cup International Football Games in 1990, which was the fijirst international soccer tournament hosted by North Korea, although this annual tournament was only held three times, with few countries participating. Secondly, the North brought in Pal Csernai, a Hungarian coach who had signifijicance experience in the German Bundesliga league, to serve as the North Korean team’s adviser from June 1991 to October 1993. The initial results were positive; within four months, North Korea would beat the United States 2–1 in a friendly. But overall, Csernai’s North Korean venture was not very successful. In October 1993, the North Korean team left for Qatar to play the preliminaries for the 1994 United States World Cup. In the preliminaries, North Korea lost every game but one. In particular, it lost 0–3 to South Korea, so allowing that country to qualify for the fijinals. Csernai returned directly to Hungary from Qatar, and the head of the national team organization was rumoured to have been demoted to being a labourer in a train station in Pyongyang (Joo 2010).

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By the mid-1990s, however, the economic and humanitarian crisis in the North, which was to result in the almost complete collapse of the food supply and healthcare systems and lead to severe deprivation, malnutrition and even starvation by many hundreds of thousands of people in some parts of the country (Smith 2005; Demick 2010), was beginning to make an impact on sporting activities too. With much of the population far more concerned about human security and the daily fijight to survive, leisure time activities paled into insignifijicance. The fijinancial costs of qualifying and participating plus an element of wounded pride may have contributed to the North Korean decision not to enter any World Cup qualifijication rounds later in the 1990s. Other sporting activities must have been afffected; the Mangyongdae Prize International Marathon which had been held annually from 1981 until 1992 was then suspended until the year 2000 (Yonhap 2003: 492). The decline – or enforced absence – in North Korean sporting achievement in the 1990s was reflected not just in the avoidance of World Cup qualifying but also in a lower-key participation and consequently record in other international sporting competitions, including the Olympics. Although the unknown young sixteen-year old Kye Sun Hi shocked the judo world by beating a much-fancied Japanese judoka in the fijinal of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics women’s judo thereby becoming the youngest ever women’s Olympic judo gold medallist, the usually-reliable North Korean boxers failed to win a medal at either Atlanta or Sydney and the overall records of North Korean competitors at those 1990s Olympics, Asian Games and international athletic championships were poor. While this may in part have been due to the lack of regular contact after 1989 with those previously sportingly strong East European socialist countries as well as the after-efffects of consciously boycotting certain sporting events (e.g. 1986 Asian Games and 1988 Olympics in South Korea), the deteriorating internal socio-economic situation may have been just as important in afffecting sports training and development (Kim 2001: 56–7). The South meanwhile was gearing up to its bid to host the 2002 Football World Cup. After coming into offfijice President Kim Young-sam did not seem as committed to a proactive sports policy as his immediate predecessors had been. He combined the Ministry of Sports and Youth with the Ministry of Culture in 1993 to create a new Ministry of Culture and Sports which arguably represented a downgrading of the sports bureaucracy’s importance. Eui Hong Shin attributes this paradox that South Korean military dictators pushed sports policies while democratic presidents did

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less to the needs of Park and Chun, in particular, to boost their legitimacy and promote their international reputation while Kim Young-sam, for example, as long-term fijighter for democracy had no such political need (Shin 2007: 18–19). Nonetheless, sporting mega-events were not ruled out by Kim, who declared his support for the bid at the end of 1994; the National Assembly also agreed and in September 1995 the South offfijicially applied to FIFA to host the 2002 event (Ahn 2002: 167; Kim 2002: 41–2). Korean enthusiasm was quickly roused. President Kim started wearing a 2002 World Cup T-shirt and cap when he went on his regular early morning jogging run; Buddhist monks at a temple in Seoul prayed for success. The South Koreans played up the ‘political elements’ of their bid (Butler 2002: 45–6). One approach was the Korean unity card: the Korean bidding committee’s secretary-general, Song Young-shik, argued that hosting the World Cup could ‘play a role in facilitating the reunifijication process’. The other approach was to disparage the rival Japanese bid by highlighting Japan’s past occupation and repression of Korea. According to Oliver Butler, the North Korean issue, however, if anything, acted as a negative factor. A formal offfer was never made to the North Koreans by FIFA; a tentative offfer from the North itself in January 1996 (in marked contrast with the North’s demands prior to the Seoul Olympics) was perceived only as a short-lived manoeuvre by ‘reformists’ within the North Korean leadership (Butler 2002: 45). Some South Korean offfijicials did talk in general terms about the desirability of having North Korea host some matches, but a later offfer in 1999 from the South to let the North host two matches was never seriously pursued (Korea Focus, May-June 1996: 110). Competition between Japan, which had embarked on the bidding process much earlier, and South Korea did, however, look like becoming over-heated. Adding to the drama, it has been alleged that one senior senior South Korean offfijicial actually lobbied against his own country in order to prevent Chung Mong-joon, the South Korean representative and a FIFA vice-president, from becoming ‘a national star’ (Breen 1998: 193); presumably to try to prevent him harbouring any domestic political ambitions, for his father had run unsuccessfully in the 1992 presidential elections. Asian Football Confederation general secretary Peter Vellapan is credited with being the fijirst senior Asian sporting offfijicial to suggest the concept of co-hosting, but during April 1996 European and African football representatives picked up the idea (Kim 2002: 42–3). In the end, in May 1996, it was co-hosting between South Korea and Japan that was agreed on pragmatically, albeit reluctantly, by

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both countries and endorsed by FIFA. The co-hosting was carried out efffijiciently, though not without many arguments along the way over venues, orders of names, etc. (Cha 2009: 26). North Korea was left out in the cold.

6.3. Rays of Sunshine The dynamics of North-South relations were to be signifijicantly altered by the victory of Kim Dae-jung, long-time rival of Kim Young-sam for leadership of the democractic movement, who, at his fourth attempt, won the December 1997 presidential election. Kim Dae-jung, who had often in the past been criticized for being ‘soft’ on North Korea, came into offfijice in February 1998 determined that he would operate a more open and consistent policy than his predecessor towards the North. The term ‘sunshine policy’ with which he is associated originated from the Aesop fable in which the sun and wind compete to see which can make the traveller take offf his coat, with the sun and its warm rays winning. Adapting this analogy to his own policy, Kim argued that by providing economic and other benefijits to the North it could be induced to change its anti-open door and anti-reform policies and generally become a ‘nicer’ place because it would recognize that the South was acting out of goodwill and not a desire to overthrow it. As Son has noted, this engagement policy had ‘many parallels with the functionalist or neo-functionalist approach’ that postulates spill-over from one dimension to another, such as from economy to politics (Son 2006: 61–2). Kim was careful not to use the term ‘unifijication policy’ and did not go beyond relying on trying to implement the spirit of the 1991 inter-Korean Agreement; he wanted the North to be encouraged to implement economic reforms that could improve the economy such that eventual reunifijication costs would be lessened (Jonnson 2006: 58–60). Kim Dae-jung began by encouraging business, cultural and tourism contacts with the North, with the Hyundai group boss Chung Ju-yung acting as a very particular broker, not least through twice delivering herds of cattle across the DMZ. While hoping that inter-governmental dialogue could also be resumed, the failure to make any progress in that respect at least initially was to prove frustrating for him. Not until June 1999 did viceministerial level talks begin but these were quickly stalled after a naval clash in the West (Yellow) Sea in which a North Korean naval ship was destroyed and around thirty North Korean sailors killed in what at that time was arguably the most serious naval clash since the end of the Korean War (Oberdorfer 2001: 423–5; Jonnson 2006: 68). Not until that same year,

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1999, did the prospects for inter-Korean sporting contacts revive and then, rather unexpectedly, it was not at the governmental or NOC-levels. First, in August 1999, at the initiative of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), which was a radical South Korean organization for workers, two inter-Korean Workers Soccer Matches were played in Pyongyang. However, these matches were greeted with some scepticism within South Korea because of the seemingly ‘pro-North’ statements and actions of the KCTU representatives while visiting Pyongyang (Byun 2003: 132–4). Second, the leading chaebol the Hyundai group, which had become one of the key instruments of the Sunshine Policy, decided, as part of a commitment to assist in building a basketball stadium in Pyongyang (reputedly at a cost of $50 million), to sponsor a series of ‘Reunifijication Basketball Matches’ during September to December 1999 (Byun 2003: 131–2; Jhe 2003: 164–5; Son 2006: 85). These basketball matches were broadcast on South Korean television, thereby becoming the fijirst live broadcast of a joint cultural event from North Korea. A North Korean basketball team then visited Seoul in December 1999, the fijirst visit by North Koreans to the South since 1993 (Jonnson 2006: 65–6). But the whole character of North-South relations appeared to change with the secret negotiations – and huge illegal cash payments of at least US$ 500 million – which resulted in the historic June 2000 summit between Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong Il, in Pyongyang, the fijirst ever such meeting between the leaders of the two states (Oberdorfer 2001: 426–33; Son 2006: 104–21). The fijive-point Joint Declaration which Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong Il signed opened the way for greater cooperation and collaboration in North-South Korean relations, by covering the reuniting of families split by the Korean War, economic cooperation, the promotion of sociocultural exchanges (sports was listed as one component of this aspect), and even inter-governmental discussion on reunifijication (Oberdorfer 2001: 426–33). For Kim Dae-jung, speaking on his return to Seoul, this was ‘a turning point so that we can put an end to the history of territorial division’ (Oberdorfer 2001: 432). After 1972 and 1991, this could be counted as the third ‘breakthrough’ in North-South relations, but the fact that neither of those two earlier agreements had been fully implemented – follow-up discussions had quickly broken down in acrimony – did not auger well for this latest agreement. However, while euphoria reigned in the South, the political improvement did encourage sporting contacts too. Typical bickering between the two Koreas had broken out at the 1998 Asian Games in Bangkok, when North Korea insisted that it march before South Korea during the opening

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ceremony but the Thai hosts said that the Thai alphabet would be used and the South Korean delegation would march in fourth while North Korea would be the thirty-fijifth team to march into the stadium. The teams were also separated in the athletes’ village as much as possible (http://allworldsport.org/35-asian-games.html). Yet, in 2000, after South Korean NOC President Kim Un-yong had accompanied Kim Dae-jung to Pyongyang and met his North Korean NOC counter-part, Pak Myong Chol, on the sidelines of the Summit, events moved quickly (Olympic Review, August-September 2000: 73). The month following the Pyongyang Summit a ‘Reunifijication Table Tennis Tournament’ between a Samsung Life Insurance team and the North’s Moranbong team was held in Pyongyang. The fijirst time for table tennis players to meet each other on Korean soil since 1948, this game, according to the North Korean media ‘swelled the hearts of the fellow countrymen with a fresh confijidence in reunifijication’ (Naenara 2000). But, more signifijicantly, direct contacts between the two Korean NOCs were quickly instituted, agreement was reached within a month and at the September 2000 Sydney Olympics the two Koreas entered the Olympic stadiums under a joint flag (the so-called ‘unifijication flag’, hanbando, consisting of a blue outline of the undivided Korean peninsula on a white background), with a signboard labelled ‘Korea’, and the 180 athletes wearing identical uniforms at the opening ceremony. One North Korean athlete and one South Korean athlete assisted each other in carrying the flag. IOC President Juan Samaranch reportedly had initially thought of using the Olympic flag with the two national flags following behind, an idea that the South endorsed, but the North insisted that there was no need for two national flags because the ultimate goal was reunifijication (Merkel 2008: 298). Anyway, undoubtedly, it was an emotional moment for the Koreans and for the watching crowd. IOC President Samaranch led a standing ovation (Yonhap 2003: 488). Nevertheless, with the opening ceremony over, the athletes competed in the various sporting events as two separate national teams. As the short but abortive negotiations in the spring of 2001 over forming a joint table-tennis team to participate in the WTTF Championships in Osaka, Japan, showed (the South blamed the ‘lessthan-positive attitude’ of the North for that breakdown (Yonhap 2003: 489) ) there was still a gap existing between joint entry to athletic ceremonies and actually creating joint teams. Certainly, some sports offfijicials in the South had hoped that this breakthrough event at the Sydney Olympics might lead on to a diversifijication of sporting contacts beyond simply discussions – and arguments – about

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forming a single team or co -hosting sporting events. A February 2001 letter from Pak Myung Chol, the President of the North’s NOC, to Kim Un-yong, President of the KSC, raised the prospect of the expansion of inter-Korean sports exchanges, and Kim Un-yong himself visited Pyongyang in June to try to follow up (Choi 2002: 111–12). But a certain loss of momentum was already beginning to occur and indeed in 2001 only one North Korean, a footballer who was actually living in Japan, visited the South on sportsrelated cultural exchange (Jonnson 2006: 79). In March 2002, a fijifth round of inter-Korean ministerial talks was cancelled and the North aborted effforts to form a joint Korean team for the WTTF Championships, as had previously been agreed (Jonnson 2006: 81). According to the Korean Football Association’s then Chairman Chung Moon-joon’s later memoirs Park Geun-hye, a leading conservative politician and daughter of Park Chung-hee, wanted to organize an inter-Korean football match in 2002 and ‘vented her anger at him’ when it could not be arranged as she had wished (Korea Times, 4 September 2011). Before any real progress could be made, therefore, South Korea’s second ‘moment in the sun’ took place. The government of Kim Dae-jung shared two characteristics in sports policy with its predecessor: a rather cool attitude to sports policy in general, perhaps best exemplifijied by the decision in 1998 to merge the Ministry of Culture and Sports with the Ministry of Tourism to create a new Ministry of Culture and Tourism that did not even have ‘sports’ in its title (Shin 2007: 19), but a strong commitment to supporting a successful World Cup. 45% of the overall sports budget for Kim’s fijive-year presidency was allocated to subsidizing the World Cup and the government had contributed massively to the construction of stadia and associated infrastructure (Ahn 2002: 167). Speaking in January 2002 a few months before the World Cup, President Kim argued that ‘The World Cup is the best opportunity to establish the success of our country. If the event is organized successfully, the image of Korea will be improved and we can expect an enormous economic impact….Relations with North Korea and Japan will also be improved.’ Not only was the event well-organized but the national team exceeded all expectations, reaching the semi-fijinals. Having never won a game in fijive previous appearances in the World Cup fijinals, many Koreans had feared before the event that their country might face the embarrassment of becoming the fijirst host nation to fail to qualify for the second stage. Yet, by concentrating on the values of ‘speed, aggression and an incredible physical stamina’ and ably coached by Guus Hiddink, a Dutchman with an uncanny ability to put the right person in the right position, South Korea

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shocked more well-established European and American national teams and delighted the increasingly euphoric ‘Red Devils’ supporters inside the stadia and the hundreds of thousands outside in the centre of Seoul, particularly around the Kwanghwamun Square, and in other cities across South Korea (Koh et al. 2007: 324; Kwon 2002; Podoler 2008: 6–10; Sweeney 2002). Although prior to the World Cup some observers had worried that the event might be utilized by the Kim Dae-jung administration as means to impose its hegemony over civil society (Ahn 2002: 170), in fact the massive street participation of citizens showed the strength and vitality of civil society as well as the particular characteristics of ‘spontaneous order’ and, ironically, set a precedent for mass peaceful ‘candlelight’ vigils on more political issues later in the 2000s. At the same time, the football fans’ appropriation of the colour red, which for most of the post-war period had been strongly associated in popular – and governmental – imagination with the communist North, could be seen as reflecting a conscious desire to move away from old Cold War complexes (including perceptions of the North) (Koh et al. 2007: 323–4; Podoler 2008: 8). Even though relations with the North – and popular perceptions of the North – were to cool again later in the 2000s, the ‘Red Devils’ reappeared at the 2006 and 2010 World Cup fijinals and have now become fijirmly cemented in South Korean and the global community’s consciousness as passionate and colourful supporters of the national football team. In comparing the 2002 World Cup with the previous sporting megaevent hosted by South Korea, the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Eunha Koh and her colleagues have identifijied a ‘key diffference in the way the population’ experienced these two sporting mega-events. The 1988 Olympics were ‘used as a form of economic and political development’, whereas the 2002 World Cup ‘was an opportunity for Korean people to celebrate the nation’ (Koh et al. 2007: 323). There was one interesting by-product of the World Cup successes for domestic politics. Chung Mong-joon, son of the Hyundai chaebol owner and also co-chair of the Korean Organizing Committee as well as a vice-president of FIFA, decided to capitalize on his new-found fame and enter the presidential elections due for December 2002. Political parties in South Korea come and go quickly and are closely linked to the authority and charisma of a particular politician. Chung followed general practice and set up a new political party, People’s Unity of the 21st Century. Aware that both he and Roh Moo-hyun were efffectively competing for the same ‘progressive’ votes against the more ‘conservative’ candidate, Lee Hoi-chang, they devised a novel approach which was to have a televised

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debate followed by a public opinion poll to decide the sole candidate. Roh came out ahead, Chung dropped out and promised to help Roh, although in another twist he withdrew his endorsement of Roh at the very last moment of the election campaign period (Heo and Roehrig 2010: 63–4). Nonetheless, Roh became president and Chung went back to his business and his football. North Korea was not participating in the 2002 World Cup, having decided not even to take part in qualifying matches (according to FIFA President Sepp Blatter this was due to concerns about the overall quality of its football team but it was more likely to be due to reticence to expose its weakness compared to the much stronger hosts, South Korea (Sports Illustrated CNN) ). But it found itself unable to ignore the mounting excitement south of the DMZ. Possibly fearing that its population would anyway unofffijicially learn about what was going on in the South, the state-run television station actually broadcast, illegally since it had not paid FIFA for television rights, the highlights of the South Korean victories over Italy and Spain with a time delay of one day, though with crowd sounds dimmed as the home crowd’s chanting of daehan minguk – Republic of Korea – became stronger. As one North Korean, actually the father of a young gymnast participating in mass games, cheerfully recounted: ‘Every time we saw scenes of our [sic] South Korean players playing just as well as countries with a long history of football and scoring goals against them, we were delighted and felt a lot of national pride. Even though we were watching it on TV, we gave real applause whenever they scored a goal’ (Bonner 2007: 80). On 30 June, Ri Gwang Gun, Chairman of the DPRK Football Association, sent a congratulatory letter to his southern counterpart, Chung Mong-joon, proclaiming the ‘striking demonstration of the advantages and tenacity of the Korean nation to the world’ (The People’s Korea, 30 June 2002). It should be noted, however, that this congratulatory message was sent only one day after a naval clash in the West Sea around the disputed Northern Limitation Line (NLL) which left dead and injured sailors on both sides; some in the South speculated that one motive for the North’s actions may have been a desire to ‘ruin the festive mood’ in the South, but it is unclear whether it was caused by a decision by a local naval commander or by the leadership in Pyongyang (Son 2006: 99; Jonnson 2006: 82–3). While the eyes of most Koreans were focused on the World Cup preparations and progress, the organizers of the 2002 Pusan Asian Games had kept in contact with the North’s NOC. Subsequently, after two rounds of talks at the Mt Kumgang resort, the North Koreans agreed to participate in

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the September 2002 Asian Games in Pusan, the fijirst ever such occasion for North Korean athletes to participate in an international sporting event in the South. North Korea sent 330 athletes by two direct flights to Gimhae airport, near Pusan, while a 291-strong cheering group arrived by ship, to which they had to return after each day’s sports events. Consisting mostly of attractive young ladies in smart uniforms and carrying out well-drilled cheering routines, this cheer-leading squad was to excite particular attention amongst the South Korean and international media. Even the locals of Pusan, South Korea’s second city and a stronghold of the conservative opposition which criticized the Sunshine policy as appeasement, ‘palpably warmed to the Northern visitors’ (Foster-Carter 2003). The North’s participation has been described as ‘one of the most spectacular events embodying national reconciliation’ (Son 2006: 90). The South’s success in obtaining North Korean participation seems in part to have been due to the South’s strategy of avoiding the complicated questions of a joint team and instead focusing on a joint parade at the opening and the subsequent separate participation of North Korean athletes in the various sports (Choi 2002: 112). However, rumours did circulate that the North Koreans had been ‘paid’ by the South to attend. The North Korean national anthem and the North Korean flag were used under a special exemption to national laws in the South which prohibited their use or display. Separately mutual visits by taekwondo teams were made to Pyongyang in September and Seoul in October (Jonnson 2006: 83). The newly-established ‘tradition’ of a joint team entry was carried on to the 2003 Asian Winter Games in Aomori and the 2004 Athens Olympics Games. Although international tensions had been raised because of the developing crisis over the North’s suspected nuclear-weapon development programme from October 2002, both sides were willing to continue to come together for these sporting events. Despite the 1994 Framework Agreement between the United States and North Korea and the subsequent intermittent dialogue over nuclear, missile and humanitarian issues between the two countries subsequently during the 1990s, neither side had been really satisfijied with the results. The United States, despite all the effforts of its intelligence community and the ‘neutral’ IAEA, remained uncertain and suspicious about exactly what the North Koreans had been doing and were doing, while the North Koreans felt that the United States and other KEDO partners were deliberately going slow on constructing the two new nuclear power plants it expected under the 1994 agreement. Despite some brief signs of a thaw in 2000, characterized most clearly by the United States entertaining a leading North Korean military offfijicial and

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US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright meeting Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang, the incoming administration of new US President George W. Bush soon adopted a cautious, indeed critical, tone, especially as evidence began to grow that the North might be using the alternative path, namely uranium enrichment, to achieve the weapons-grade nuclear material it was banned from reprocessing through the 1994 agreement (Chinoy 2008: 81–91; ElBaradei 2011: 89–90). In January 2002, Bush cited North Korea as one of three states, along with Iraq and Iran, that constituted an ‘axis of evil’ involved in supporting international terror campaigns and the development of weapons of mass destruction (Woodward 2004: 86–93). Following further intelligence analyses, in October 2002 a senior US diplomat, James Kelly, visited Pyongyang to confront the North – and was surprised when the North openly acknowledged the existence of its uranium enrichment programme. The exact phraseology used has remained controversial (and the North later made it clear that it did not say what Kelly thought it had said), but the net efffect was to raise the bilateral temperature (Pinkston and Saunders 2003). The Bush administration persuaded KEDO to suspend further oil-provision operations, the North announced it would reopen its frozen nuclear facilities and then expelled IAEA inspectors and withdrew from the NPT. By 2003 the North was proclaiming its right to develop a ‘nuclear deterrent’ (Chinoy 2008: 43–174; ElBaradei 2011: 90–3). Although it did agree to join the China-hosted Six-Party Talks, along with South Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia, from August 2003 onwards, the North apparently remained convinced that the United States was planning (Iraqstyle) to attack it militarily (Smith 2005: 172). Against this background of political tension, for both Koreas a desire to pass a political message to the United States may have contributed to this continued cooperation through joint entries to sporting mega-events. The North certainly would have wanted to show to the United States, which was acting in such a ‘hostile’ manner in the North’s view, that it could still coordinate with the South and, indeed, there were effforts primarily made through the North Korean media during 2002–2003 to try to drive a wedge between South Korea and the United States by emphasizing the common North-South cause of reunifijication which the United States was depicted as frustrating (Song 2003: 30; Son 2006: 159). In the South, where Kim Daejung had not exactly had a meeting of minds during his encounters with US President Bush, some strategists argued for an almost ‘neutral’ stance as a way of both promoting a more independent South Korean foreign policy and distancing the South from the worsening political atmosphere

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in US-North Korean relations (Son 2006: 158–63).2 At the same time, of course, this limited sporting cooperation did serve to exemplify Kim Daejung’s ‘sunshine policy’ by demonstrating that however bad relations might be over nuclear and other issues, engagement with North still brought about some tangible benefijits, limited though they might be. Kim’s presidential successor, Roh Moo-hyun, who came into offfijice in February 2003, was equally strongly committed to a policy of dialogue and engagement with the North (which he labelled the ‘Peace and Prosperity Policy’, but which essentially committed the South to a continuation of the ‘Sunshine Policy’) and as such was also out of tune with the Bush administration’s tough attitude towards the North (Son 2006: 184–6). But, the two Koreas were not just targetting the Americans; they were also not above making a point to the Japanese too, as on 15 August 2005 the national football teams played a friendly game in Seoul as part of the events to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the end of Japanese colonial occupation; as Guy Podoler comments, ‘this piece of history remains a linchpin of the notion of a single ethnic nation’ (Podoler 2008: 13). Son Key-young has argued that the institutionalization of inter-Korean relations was one of Kim Dae-jung’s two clear policy goals (the other, federalization, was seen as following on organically from the fijirst) (Son 2006: 66–7). Son’s evaluation of the balance-sheet in this respect during Kim’s presidency can be summarized as follows: (i) political dialogue – only one summit meeting (since Kim Jong Il refused to journey south), but regular envoy and ministerial-level meetings; (ii) military – one round of defence ministers’ talks but no routine dialogue: (iii) economic – twenty rounds of talks, which ‘far surpassed’ earlier effforts at economic cooperation (Son 2006: 134–5). To this somewhat mixed record should be added the sports talks, which are not mentioned in Son’s analytical survey, but which became a regular practice if only in order to confijirm the arrangements for joint entry at sporting mega-events. The IOC certainly continued to hope that ‘sport can unite people’. IOC President Jacques Rogge, speaking on the eve of the opening of the Universiade Games (international student games) in Daegu, South Korea, in August 2003, expressed his belief that a joint Korean march at the Athens Olympics the following year would act ‘as a strong symbol of friendship and peace’ and that a joint team would be ‘wonderful’, 2 Then US National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, has recalled: ‘The meeting with Kim Dae-jung was polite, but it was very clear that we were worlds apart on how to deal with the North’ (Rice 2011: 36).

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while nonetheless expressing concerns that politics may prove to be harmful to this proposal (Rutherford 2003). North Korea had sent around 500 student athletes, cheerleaders and journalists to the Universiade and it was perhaps a measure of President Roh’s determination to keep engaged that he apologized to the North after a group of right-wing South Korean protesters burnt the North Korean flag (Son 2006: 186). Nevertheless, as one Hong Kong participant noted, the ‘segregation’ of the North Korean athletes behind tight security, at their own request, ‘destroyed the atmosphere of harmony’ at the Daegu Games (Leung 2004: 11). At a more local level, nearly 200 North Koreans attended the ‘Cheju Island National Peace and Unifijication Athletic and Culture Festival’ in October 2003 bringing with them the ‘sacred fijire’ from Mt Paektu; men’s and women’s football and table-tennis as well as traditional folk games were played (Jonnson 2006: 90). In the run-up to the Athens Olympics the two sides did agree once again on a joint entry into the opening ceremony (China Daily, 27 February 2004). Yet this was not without controversy either, as rumours began to circulate that South Korea’s IOC vice president, Kim Un-yong, had paid up to US$1 million to his North Korean counterpart, Chang Ung, to achieve this cooperation in Athens (ITF 2007). Kim Un-yong was certainly not above suspicion, having been implicated in the earlier IOC bribery scandal over the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics bid and then in 2004 sentenced by a South Korean court to two years in prison on embezzlement and bribery charges at home (he resigned from the IOC in 2005). Nonetheless, after the Athens Olympics there was a revival of proposals to form a joint team for the 2006 Asian Games in Doha and, more importantly, the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Representatives of the two Korean NOCs met in Guangzhou in September 2005 (where they agreed in principle on a unifijied team for the Doha Asian Games), in Macau in November 2005, and in December 2005 when they began a series of bilateral meetings in Kaesong, on the NorthSouth Korean border (South China Morning Post, 9 September 2005; JoongAng Daily, 9 September 2005; China Daily, 2 November 2005). As had been the case in earlier talks, the IOC actively encouraged bilateral talks and occasionally hosted trilateral talks. After the December 2005 meeting had reached an impasse over the methods of selecting athletes and conducting training sessions, a stalemate situation which continued for several months, in early June 2006 IOC President Rogge wrote to both Kim Jong Il and South Korean President Roh urging them to cooperate in forming a unifijied team at least for the Beijing Olympics (Korea Times,

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23 June 2006). Although a further North-South NOC meeting was held in late June 2006, the missile tests by the North in July 2006 brought a halt to exchanges. Sporting dialogues felt the heat. In the words of Kim Jong-kil, the South’s NOC President, ‘The North Korean missile issue has hampered inter-Korean sports talks’ (BBC Monitoring Reports, 19 July 2006). As has become the pattern throughout the period since the Six-Party Talks began in 2003, apparent progress after arduous negotiations – in this case the September 2005 Declaration that laid out an agreed set of principles for resolving the nuclear crisis (Chinoy 2008: 241–51) – was quickly followed by frustrating set-backs. Fractious megaphone diplomacy over details, a suspension of dialogues, and fijinally the North Korean missile tests. Despite the six member countries of the Six-Party Talks, it was clear that the US-North Korean bilateral relationship was key to progress – or lack of progress in the nuclear disarmament process. In the words of Mohamed ElBaradei, Director-General of the IAEA, the two leading actors in the years after 2002, the United States and North Korea, played out ‘a strikingly similar script of provocation and counter-provocation, brinkmanship and pacifijication, on-again, offf-again negotiations, with the rest of the international community bereft of the tools to change the dynamic’ (ElBaradei 2011: 89). But Rogge had not given up on inter-Korean sporting dialogue and later, on 5 September, he hosted the heads of the two NOCs at a meeting in Lausanne. By including an offfer to increase the number of athletic spots open to Korea if there were to be a unifijied team it seems that he felt they were ‘making progress’ (South China Morning Post, 20 October 2006). But, after the 9 October nuclear test by the North, its fijirst ever such test, talks again ground to a halt. As Kim Sang-woo, the South Korean NOC’s Secretary General, commented: ‘We will have to watch carefully how the international community and International Olympic Committee react before we resume talks with the North on a unifijied team’ (South China Morning Post, 11 October 2006). However, in response to a telephone message from the North’s NOC President the South agreed in late November to carry out talks about a joint entry into the Asian Games (Chosun Ilbo, 23 November 2006). In the absence of any last-minute agreement over a joint team (not seriously expected by either side), the two Koreas’ athletes marched in together at the opening ceremony but competed separately at the Doha Asian Games. Nonetheless, at this time North Korea did openly convey to the IOC its support for South Korea’s Pyeongchang’s bid to host the 2014 Winter Olympics. Mun Jae Dok, President of the North Korean NOC, sent a letter

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to Rogge in December 2006 arguing that a Pyeonchang Olympics would enhance reconciliation and cooperation between the two Koreas and make a positive contribution to peace and stability on the peninsula (Korea Times, 22 December 2006). The Gangwon province Governor, Kim Jun-sun, had visited Pyongyang earlier the same month and seemed to gain the agreement of Mun and other sporting leaders; on his return to Pyeongchang he argued: ‘North Korea’s offfijicial support for our bid through the letter will improve the image of a peaceful Olympics’ (Korea Times, 22 December 2006). Gangwon is the only province on the peninsula which is itself divided, with one ‘province’ each north and south of the DMZ; as such it provided added symbolism of the national division. Governor Kim had been particularly keen on utilizing sports links; in March 2006, he invited a local North Korean ice hockey team to join in a mixed team friendly hockey match (making use of the newly-opened Tonghae highway to cross over by land into the South) and the following year he invited some North Korean children to join in an international ‘Dream Programme’ event for winter sports (Merkel 2008: 302). However, despite having probably the best technical presentation, the earnest presence of President Roh and public support from the President of North Korea’s NOC, at the July 2007 IOC meeting Pyeongchang was narrowly beaten by Sochi, Russia, in voting over the hosting. It was Pyeongchang’s second successive Winter Olympics defeat, having lost equally narrowly to Vancouver in bidding for the 2010 Winter Olympics. The South Koreans had strongly stressed the signifijicance of the Winter Olympics as contributing to breakthroughs in inter-Korean relations, despite the existing tensions on the peninsula, but, as Victor Cha has argued, they ‘probably…..overplayed the diplomatic card’ (Cha 2009: 37–8). Whether it was the power of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s multilingual lobbying, a desire to reward the ‘new’ Russia with its fijirst Olympic hosting since the fall of the Soviet Union, or a feeling that the Koreans’ political linkage to reunifijication aspirations was too explicit, the IOC baulked at the idea of a Pyeongchang hosting and condemned that city – and South Korea – to consider whether it could be ‘third time lucky’ with a later bid for the 2018 Winter Olympics. Speaking at the Winter Olympics voting session, President Roh had made clear his belief in the formation of a ‘unifijied team’ as ‘an important milestone at how far Korea has come’ and adding impetus to bringing inter-Korean reconciliation (Cha 2009: 38). Roh had been focusing on the longer-term (2014) situation, but the sports – and political – leaders in both Koreas also had their eyes on the the shorter-term objective, the 2008

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Olympics in Beijing. During 2007, formal inter-Korean talks on a joint Olympic team for Beijing took place in Kaesong in February, with more informal contacts in Kuwait in April and in Hong Kong in June 2007, but still no resolution was achieved. When President Roh travelled north to participate in the second North-South Korean Summit in Pyongyang in October 2007, the resultant so-called eight point ‘peace declaration’ merely contained a fairly standard reference to sports being one of the sectors in which the two Koreas should cooperate (Moon 2007). A South Korean Foreign Ministry offfijicial explained to his American counterpart afterwards that this point about social-cultural exchanges (including sports) was ‘strictly a feel-good statement, with no supporting work underway’ (Wikileaks: 5 October 2007). According to one South Korean offfijicial the specifijic issue of a joint presence at the Beijing Olympics was briefly discussed over dinner at the instigation of the South Korean NOC head who was part of Roh’s delegation, but no resolution was reached, so the fijinal declaration contains only the agreement with what had originated as Kim Jong Il’s informal proposal, namely, that a joint cheering team should be formed and travel on the recently-reopened western coast cross-border train from Seoul to Pyongyang and Sinuiju and then on to Beijing. There was a considerable degree of agreement between the two NOCs on issues such as the flag (the much-used unifijication flag), the national anthem to be played when medal winners are on the podium (the 1920s version of the traditional Korean folk song ‘Arirang’), and the uniforms (following earlier designs but all supplied by the South). However, one key area remained outstanding – and it was an issue that has remained sensitive since those early days of the 1960s – how to choose the athletes to compete. For individual sports, the accepted manner is for individual athletes to achieve qualifijication for the Olympics by reaching the necessary standards set down by the IOC and the relevant international sporting federation. The problems come with team sports. The disagreement basically boiled down to the selection of team members. The South argued that the athletes should be chosen on merit (simply the best players from each side), while the North argued that they should be chosen in equal numbers, to reflect the truly unifijied and egalitarian nature of the team. For the South, one unifijied team should be stronger than two divided ones, particularly in key team sport events. For the North, it is a matter of national pride that its athletes should not be seen as inferior to the South’s and should be treated equally. Clearly in some team sports the South is stronger, such as men’s soccer and handball, while in others the North has a

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stronger international reputation, such as women’s soccer. Even if the basic principle of selection had been agreed, then there still remained the issue of the mechanism for selecting the players, whether through training or practice matches or some other format. With time running out – and the IOC did urge the two sides to speed up any agreement – domestic political change in the South came into play, as will be discussed in the next chapter.

CHAPTER SEVEN

COOLING DOWN After the election of the more conservative Lee Myung-bak as the next South Korean president in December 2007 relations between the two Koreas began to cool and after his inauguration in February 2008 all discussions between the two Korean NOCs on a joint team and even on the joint cheering squad were suspended. In his election campaign, President Lee had pledged to modify his two predecessors’ engagement policy, and casting himself as a pragmatist, his new conservative version of the engagement policy suggested that South Korea would provide bold economic support to help increase North Korea’s per capita income to US $3,000 within ten years (recent estimates vary, as the North produces no reliable statistics, but per capita income could be around $1,000 currently) and assist it to become more integrated into the world community – if the communist country abandoned its nuclear weapons programme. President Lee’s inauguration policy initiative or ‘Vision 3000’, as it became dubbed, focused on denuclearization and intra-Korean economic cooperation (forming an ‘economic community’), while playing down those elements of socio-cultural exchange which had been promoted under the Kim and Roh administrations. Lee’s vision was not well-received by the North, which thought it condescending and an afffront to its pride (Burghart and Hoare 2009: 58–9). 7.1. The Road to Beijing1 The authoritative January 2008 New Year joint editorial by the leading media organs in the North had lauded the North’s own sporting progress: ‘A revolutionary way of cultural and emotional life prevailed across the country, and wonderful successes were achieved in the sports fijield giving delight to the people.’ It argued that ‘cooperation and exchanges between the north and south should be expanded and developed to make them

1 This section draws on some material previously published in Bridges 2009.

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contribute to national reunifijication substantially’, but, nonetheless, without specifijically criticizing the incoming president by name (the North remained cautious initially after the election to see what would happen in practice), warned that ‘pro-US sycophancy and treachery’ (coded description for the new Lee team) would not be tolerated (KCNA 2008). Both sides changed their NOC heads, with Pak Hak Son, a long-standing but rather low-key sporting offfijicial within fijirst the Socialist Youth League before becoming the number two at the Physical Culture and Sports Guidance Commission (PCSGC) two years earlier, replacing Mun as President of the NOC and Chairman of the PCSGC in the North in February 2008 and Lee Yun-taek replacing Kim Jong-kil, who resigned in April 2008 after a disagreement with the incoming Lee administration over senior appointments within the NOC, in the South (Yonhap 2008; Korea Times, 25 June 2008). These changes did little to contribute to maintaining open channels of communication, although the South’s Lee unusually had at least served previously in the position of NOC President earlier in the 2000s. But, by the spring of 2008, the ‘honeymoon’ of the new President Lee Myung-bak had ended as the North Korean media abandoned restraint and became increasingly critical of his policies and attitudes (McEarchern 2010: 202–204; Burghart and Hoare 2009: 59–61). This political chill was rapidly transmitted to the sporting dimension. In an Olympic year all eyes were focused on China. The roles that the IOC and China, whether the government itself or the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG), could play in trying to facilitate inter-Korean sporting cooperation for the Games were constrained. As before, the IOC was encouraging from the sidelines, but careful to avoid getting as actively involved as it had done in the pre-1988 Olympics talks. China was clearly committed to deploying immense resources into hosting a successful and prestigious Olympics (Close et al. 2007; Xu 2008). As such, in the Korean context, China would have liked to ensure at the very least the repetition of the joint entry parade at the opening and closing ceremonies that had become the norm since 2000. In parallel with its role in pushing forward a solution to the North Korean nuclear issue through hosting the Six-Party Talks and cajoling the participants towards a solution (the February 2007 agreement on disabling North Korean nuclear facilities, for example) in that aspect, China was probably looking for something more in the sports fijield beyond simply a joint team entry. One step was to plan the Olympic torch route in such a manner that the flame would pass directly from Seoul to Pyongyang. Since the flame, for security and speed reasons, was transported between participating cities

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on the global torch relay by aircraft, the hopes of some within South Korea that the flame might be symbolically carried across the DMZ were quickly quashed. The global ‘journey of harmony’ for the Olympic flame proved to be anything but harmonious, with violent clashes in several cities in Europe and North America and the relay held almost literally behind closed doors in others. The flame relay in Seoul on 26 April was marred by the violence used by Chinese student supporters, many of whom reportedly had been assembled by Chinese embassy stafff and who physically attacked Korean human rights demonstrators (Edney 2008: 115–16). This source of violence was in marked contrast with earlier stages of the torch relay in other parts of the world, notably in Europe and North America, when the flame seemed under threat from anti-Chinese demonstrators. In Seoul, Korean protesters did not try to obstruct the actual torch relay or put out the flame; the initiative for the violence seemingly came from the Chinese student side. Indeed, fully aware of the South Korean public’s outrage at these incidents, the South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister called in the Chinese ambassador in Seoul to protest over these incidents. The Chinese ambassador expressed his ‘deep regret’, but both the South Korean media and the public remained disturbed by what they interpreted as an ‘unprovoked outpouring of Chinese nationalist sentiment’ (Wikileaks: 29 April 2008). However, the Chinese were relieved that the Pyongyang leg on 28 April was greeted by the most rapturous and supportive crowd of anywhere on the long international route. The fijirst runner of the Pyongyang leg was Pak Doo Ik, famous for being the goal scorer in North Korea’s epic 1966 World Cup win over Italy, who received the torch from Kim Yong Nam, President of the Supreme People’s Assembly, and the last runner was Jong Song Ok, the so-called ‘Queen of the Marathon’ because of her success in the 1999 World Championships. Kim Jong Il did not appear publicly at any of the Olympic-related events held in Pyongyang, possibly because of his illhealth, although the stroke which he is widely believed to have sufffered probably did not occur until mid-August 2008 (Frank 2009: 50). A second expectation was that the invitations to Korean political and sporting leaders to attend the opening ceremony might provide the opportunity for informal contacts on the side-lines in the way that, for example, the 1990 Beijing Asian Games had done. At a time when considerable international controversy had arisen over the Tibetan situation and Chinese actions to suppress demonstrations there, neither Korea was willing to upset China by joining in a boycott of the opening ceremony as was being advocated in some countries. North Korea, as a close ally, sent Kim

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Yong Nam, efffectively the number two to Kim Jong Il in protocol terms, while from South Korea President Lee himself attended. However, although the two leaders both attended a welcome luncheon linked to the opening ceremony and hosted by Chinese President Hu Jintao, they were not seated at the same table and did little more than briefly greet each other, so that no ‘meaningful dialogue’ resulted (Na 2008). Moreover, the plan for a joint entry march into the opening ceremony stadium also unravelled. Talks between the two NOCs had stalled after the inauguration of President Lee Myung-bak in February, requests from the South Korean NOC for further talks went unanswered by the North and by June the IOC President Rogge had to resort to sending letters to the two Koreas asking them to at least carry on the eight-year old practice of a joint march. The South remained willing to continue the past practice, with one government offfijicial commenting in early July that ‘We think it would be good if the two sides march together.’ Paek Hyun-sup, an offfijicial with the South Korean NOC, said his organization had been trying to set up the joint march in cooperation with the IOC and BOCOG, although it had not talked directly to the North Korean NOC due to the political tension (China Daily, 2 July 2008). In the end, mediating effforts by both the IOC and BOCOG proved in vain. The North Koreans not only proved unwilling to join in a joint entry but also refused to march immediately behind the South Koreans, so the two countries’ athletes were separated by Fiji, Cameroon and Montenegro at the 8 August opening ceremony. The North Koreans also turned down an IOC proposal that the athletes wear similar uniforms even if they entered separately (Ramstad and Park 2008). Incidentally, the uniforms, tracksuits and shoes used by the North Koreans at the Beijing Olympics were sponsored by a Fujian-based Chinese sports clothing manufacturing company, Hongxing Erke. IOC President Rogge was disappointed at the failure to achieve even a joint entry, describing it as ‘a setback for peace, and harmony and reunifijication’: ‘There was a great willingness on the side of sport to have a joint march like we did in Sydney and in Athens,’ Rogge said. ‘Unfortunately, both the political powers in the South and the North did not agree, and I regret this very much’ (Tedmanson 2008). Once the Games began, in terms of the medal count – often considered the most important marker of sporting ‘success’ by the media, sports fans, and indeed governments – both Koreas performed above expectations. South Korea beat Japan to become the second highest ranked Asian country after the hosts, with thirty-one medals including thirteen golds, most notably with Park Tae-hwan becoming the fijirst ever Asian athlete to win

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a swimming gold when he won the men’s 400 metres freestyle. North Korea recorded its second best Olympics ever, with seven medals, including two golds (North Korea’s fijirst since the 1996 Atlanta Games). This better than expected performance by South Korean athletes had an indirect benefijit for President Lee by helping to move public attention away from other contentious issues, such as a row with the United States over beef imports, and providing at least a temporary boost to his opinion poll ratings which had been steadily declining during 2008 (Wikileaks: 28 August 2008). Even though one senior North Korean sports offfijicial had predicted before the Games that the North could win as many as ten medals in Beijing (Hankyoreh Shinmun, 28 July 2008), this was still a creditable performance and, indeed, would have been even better if one pistol shooter, Kim Jong Su, had not been disqualifijied for drug-taking after winning two medals. Kim Jong Il’s own assessment of the North’s recent sporting achievements, as reported by KCNA in January 2009, was that ‘our sportspersons have achieved shining successes in international games’, but that nonetheless there was ‘the need to round offf the Korean-style sports technique and tactical system and training methods to put the sports technique on a higher level’ (BBC 2009). While Kim seems to have been talking primarily about elite sports, the North was also concerned about the linkages between what in the IOC context would have been called ‘sport for all’ and elite sport. In April 2006 the Korea Sports Fund had been set as a ‘non-governmental non-profijit organization offfijicially recognized by the DPRK government’ in order to give ‘positive fijinancial and material cooperation for physical culture and sports to make a contribution to inspiring all the citizens to take active part in sporting activities and athletes to exalt the honour of the country in international games with gold medals’ (Pyongyang Times, 19 May 2011). Non-governmental organizations do not operate in the Western way in North Korea, and this body seems to be mainly concerned with soliciting sporting goods donations and fijinancial support from overseas, especially amongst the pro-North Korean residents of Japan. It was not favourably received by the South Korean government, which early in 2011 blocked access to its website for South Korean internet users. Nonetheless, a somewhat similar point about the linkages between mass and elite sports was made in the authoritative New Year joint editorial by the leading newspapers in January 2009: ‘It is necessary to stimulate public interest in the development of sports, make sports mass-based and ensure that sportspersons register good results in every international game’ (KCNA 2009).

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Both inter-Korean relations and the Six-Party Talks went through difffijicult times during the 2008–2009 period. As the North became disillusioned with President Lee’s approach, tensions arose over two main focuses of previous inter-Korean cooperation, the Mt Kumgang tourist site (the shooting of a female tourist by a North Korean guard in July 2008 led to a suspension of tours) and the Kaesong industrial complex, where restrictions on access and activities were imposed by the North in late 2008 (Burghart and Hoare: 2009: 60–4). Six-Party Talks also went through a roller-coaster ride, with some progress – a North Korean declaration (albeit incomplete) of its nuclear programme details and a symbolic blowing up of a cooling tower in June 2008 – being counter-balanced by arguments over verifijication procedures. In October 2008, the United States removed North Korea from its list of terrorism-sponsoring countries and IAEA inspectors returned to the Yongbyon site, but the North, evidently wishing to remind the international community to take it seriously, fijirst in April 2009 tested a long-range missile and second followed up with its second nuclear test in May 2009 (ElBaradei 2011: 104–109). UN Security Council condemnations followed both events and the Six-Party Talks went into abeyance and, as of April 2012, had still not reconvened. In fact, NorthSouth Korean relations deteriorated even further during 2010 as the South Korean naval frigate, Cheonan, was sunk with the loss of all its crew in March 2010 and then in November North Korean artillery shelled the South Korean island of Yeonpyong, killing four people including the fijirst civilian deaths since the end of the Korean War. Lee’s government – and an international report commissioned by the South – blamed the North for the Cheonan sinking; something which the North vehemently denied.2 The November exchange was blamed by the North on the South’s earlier exercise fijirings in a nearby area. The North refused to apologize for either action, while the Lee administration insisted on an apology before serious talks could be resumed. The impasse continued throughout 2011 and into 2012, although there were signs that some behind-the-scenes contacts were occurring, including failed negotiations in the spring of 2011 for a possible third Summit meeting.

2 The Cheonan sinking remains controversial within South Korea, with a signifijicant percentage of the population remaining sceptical about the veracity of the investigation report. A summary of that report can be found in Time, 13 August 2010. For a critical analysis of the report’s fijindings see Beal (2011).

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7.2. Football Fall-Out If the Olympics mark the pinnacle of multi-sports mega-events, they are almost rivalled in terms of popular and media interest by the World Cup in football. Both Koreas have put great weight on their participation and performance in the World Cups, although so far it is only South Korea which has succeeded in regularly reaching the fijinals and, of course, notably cohosted with Japan the 2002 World Cup. Up until the 2010 World Cup, North Korea’s only appearance in the fijinals had been in 1966, yet the memory of that time still holds echoes today on both sides of the border; South Korean supporters in the crowd cheering on their team against Italy in 2002 held up banners with the words ‘Again 1966’ (Podoler 2008: 13). The draw for the Asian qualifying groups for the 2010 World Cup, which pitched the two Koreas in the same preliminary group, was therefore bound to raise competitive spirits. Consequently, the two Koreas played each other twice in the preliminary group, drawing both times, before moving on to the fijinal Asian qualifying group, when they again fought out a tough draw before the South managed to defeat the North for the fijirst time in fijifteen years in April 2009, though amidst the North’s allegations of food poisoning of three of its players. However, while the North Koreans did visit Seoul to play in June 2008 and April 2009 – and the South made no objection to flying the North Korean flag and playing the North’s national anthem – difffijiculties arose over the return legs. The North argued for simply the unifijication flag and ‘Arirang’ instead of national anthems, but the South wished to use the normal national flags and anthems. The decision by football’s governing body, FIFA, to switch the 26 March 2008 qualifying match from Pyongyang to Shanghai because the two countries could not agree on which flags and national anthems should be used suggested that sporting relations outside the Olympics arena were indeed deteriorating. The move, at least in terms of fan support, was to the North’s disadvantage, since instead of 100,000 patriotic fans at home the North’s team played in Shanghai in front of a crowd that was overwhelmingly supporting the South (Duerden 2008). The 10 September 2008 match in Shanghai, which yet again ended as a draw, failed even to ignite much interest amongst fans, as barely 500 people turned up to watch what was described as a ‘tedious afffair’ (China Daily, 12 September 2008). Nonetheless, the achievement of both Koreas in qualifying for the 2010 World Cup fijinals was welcomed in both countries. In the North, the authoritative New Year joint editorial by leading newspapers on 1 January 2010 claimed: ‘sportspersons registered good results bringing great pleasure to the people’

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(KCNA 2010), which was surely at least in major part a reference to the footballing successes. Determined to build on its strong record of World Cup appearances and anticipating likely qualifijication for the 2010 South Africa World Cup, South Korea continued to aim high in the football world and in February 2009 submitted a bid to again host the World Cup, in 2022. FIFA’s rotation policy had made it almost certain that 2018 would go to a ‘European’ country, so the South Koreans decided to focus on the 2022 bid. South Korea already had many suitable stadia surviving from 2002 and had promised to upgrade other stadia. According to Han Sung-joo, former foreign minister, who was appointed bid committee chairman: ‘hosting a World Cup will be an efffective tool to improve South Korea’s brand value’ (KFA 2009). South Korea played up its experience as being a host previously of major sporting events, its undoubted passion for football (as shown by its fan support in 2002), and the potentialities for assisting in peace construction on the peninsula. Despite some heavy lobbying effforts carried out by South Korea, which included President Lee visiting FIFA headquarters in January 2010, it was to be unsuccessful, with FIFA deciding in December 2010 on Russia to host the 2018 World Cup and Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup. North Korean media had made no immediate comment on the original South Korean bid, but the North Korean factor, in so far as the exchange of artillery shells around the offf-shore island of Yeonpyeong (and the killing of South Korean civilians) near to the disputed sea border (the Northern Limit Line) took place in late November 2010, only three weeks before the FIFA vote, may well have played a negative, albeit relatively minor, role in the FIFA decision-making process. The sheer fijinancial clout of Qatar, plus the desire of some within the FIFA leadership to spread the football ‘gospel’ to the Middle East were almost certainly more important factors (Futterman 2011). Before that vote was taken, however, both Koreas had appeared for the fijirst time ever in the same World Cup fijinals, in South Africa in June 2010. During the qualifying stages, the North Korean coach had expressed the expectation that both Koreas would qualify and then ‘the two teams could be unifijied and go together as one’ (World Soccer, 9 July 2009), but given the strength of national feeling in both countries over football (regardless of the political climate) that was never going to happen. While not reaching the dizzy heights of the 2002 World Cup, South Korea performed creditably by progressing to the last sixteen, the fijirst time this was achieved at an overseas tournament. Although the South eventually lost to Uruguay in

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the next round, the performances had been watched on giant public television screens with enthusiasm by large crowds in Seoul and other cities; even President Lee sent a congratulatory message to the team (South China Morning Post, 24 June 2010). But North Korea was in many ways a highlight of the tournament, not so much for their results (which were exciting though ultimately not unexpected in the so-called ‘group of death’) as for the level of interest their secretive and almost unknown team excited amongst the sporting media. Bizarre and unsubstantiated stories of requesting neighbouring Swaziland to pay the North Korean team to train there before the World Cup opened (actually the team went to Switzerland), of players relaxing by playing rock-paper-scissors games, and of players being outfijitted with individual earpieces so that Kim Jong Il could personally instruct them while on the pitch abounded (Chosun Ilbo, 22 March 2010; Fairbanks 2010). Star striker, Jong Tae Se, born and bred in Japan, broke down in tears while the North Korean anthem was being played before the start of the game against Brazil, thereby providing one of the most memorable images of the fijinals. The team displayed stubborn resistance against world champions Brazil, scoring a late goal and only losing 1–2. With seventeen hours’ time delay, the match was shown on North Korean state television – according to KCNA, supporters were happy to see the Korean team making a fijight of it with Brazil. 1966 World Cup star Pak Doo Ik was quoted as saying that he hoped that the team would ‘produce a new myth of Songun Korea in the tournament to live up to the expectation of the Korean people’ (KCNA, 17 June 2010; Vantage Point, July 2010). For the fijirst time ever the following game was shown live on North Korean state television, but unfortunately the North lost 0–7 to Portugal, the most one-sided game in the whole tournament (South China Morning Post, 23 June 2010; Vantage Point, August 2010). There were no further broadcasts, as a 0–3 defeat by Ivory Coast sealed elimination. In the weeks after the tournament rumours began to spread that the players and the coach had been subject to a humiliating public dressing down on their return to Pyongyang, that the coach had been sacked and was working on a building site, and that some players had even been tortured (Daily Mail, 31 July 2010). There was sufffijicient doubt aroused that the FIFA President Sepp Blatter, after representations from a senior South Korean football offfijicial, sent a letter to the North Korea football federation to ask about their election of a new president and to fijind out if the allegations made by the media that the coach and some players were condemned and punished were true, but the North Koreans assured FIFA that Kim Jong Hun, the head coach of the national team, and all the .

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other members of the national team were training as usual, that there were no sanctions on the coach and that the reports on this matter were baseless (Daily Telegraph, 11 August 2010; Guardian, 20 August 2010; FIFA. com, 25 August 2010; Korea Times, 27 August 2010). Nonetheless, later reports suggested that changes were being instituted: splitting the football federation in two and putting the larger international section under military control; looking for a replacement for Kim Jung Hun, who returned to coaching April 25 club team, the country’s leading club (named after Military Foundation Day); and improving the long-term experience of their international players by sending more of them to play club football in overseas leagues (Observer, 28 November 2010).

7.3. Northern Reminders The North, efffectively removed from serious contention for hosting international sporting events by its discriminatory record in the late 1970s and at the same time wary of the fijinancial costs involved, avoided even bidding for the hosting of any signifijicant international sporting events in the 1990s and 2000s. The only example was that Pyongyang was actually selected as the host of the second East Asian Games, planned for September 1995; according to the North’s NOC Secretary-General Chang Ung, ‘We requested to stage the second East Asian Games and the co-ordination committee were happy to award them to us. We think they have a good future’ (South China Morning Post, 7 May 1993). Although the North Koreans had had no plans to build any new stadiums, but rather to concentrate on up-grading the 150,000-capacity national stadium and a host of other venues which had been constructed in the mid-1980s, costs may well have been a factor in why they later pulled out. The second East Asian Games was then hosted by Pusan in 1997, with North Korea a non-participant. But there has been one important exception to the low-key international profijile: mass gymnastics. Building on an earlier post-1948 practice of mass gymnastics displays on national holidays that in turn owes at least a nod to earlier Soviet effforts, the North has regularly organized mass gymnastic games, known as the Arirang Festival, in Pyongyang from 2002 onwards. While international audiences, Chinese as well as Western, were catered for in this show (this author personally witnessed the fijirst Arirang in June 2002), it has been primarily an event for well-drilled North Korean youngsters to show offf their skills – and loyalty – through what Kim Jong Il

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himself has basically described as ‘a mixed form of comprehensive physical exercises with a combination of high ideological content, artistic quality and gymnastic skills’ (Merkel 2010: 2481–2). As Udo Merkel has observed, these spectacular shows are ‘unique and offfer an alternative to modern sport since they have reinvigorated an outdated form of Sovietstyle physical culture that involves the masses and falls outside the dominant “higher, stronger, faster” philosophy’ (Merkel 2010: 2486). B.R. Myers adds a further dimension by arguing that these mass games are, in fact, more than just exercises in Stalinist-style anti-individualism but rather ‘joyous celebrations of the pure-bloodedness and homogeneity from which the [Korean] race’s superiority derives’ (Myers 2010: 83). Undoubtedly, as Jung Woo Lee and Alan Bairner have argued, from their inception the mass gymnastic games were ‘planned as a political performance’ and each one ‘has consisted of various political messages, reflecting political circumstances related to the state’ (Lee and Bairner 2009: 343). Yet, at the same time as demonstrating the KWP’s control over the content of the performance and the lives of the young gymnasts, according to Nick Bonner, the producer of a unique documentary on the mass games (‘The State of Mind’), these games also reveal ‘the humanity of the people of North Korea’ (Bonner 2007: 78). But despite North Korean pride and self-confijidence in their mass games, these were not intended for export. Only in developing taekwondo did the North try to claim a specifijic sporting role globally. Koreans on both sides of the border have a strong association with this traditional Korean sporting activity, which has been traced back by some historians to the fourth century AD, and indeed in both countries it is now promoted as a national sport. The North, however, seems to have only become seriously interested in promoting the sport from the 1980s. Perhaps this interest was stimulated by the IOC’s decision to allow taekwondo to be given ‘demonstration sport’ status starting from the Seoul Olympics. Taekwondo became an integral part of military training in the North, as well as at schools, colleges and even workplaces where training and competitions were encouraged. From the offfijicial viewpoint, juche has been heavily emphasized as the backbone of tactics and movements, thereby making taekwondo something more than just a martial art (Park 2002: 80). Ironically, it has been an exiled South Korean practitioner, Choi Hung Hi, who fled to the North in 1979, who became one of the most influential teachers; on his death in 2002 he was buried in the national patriot cemetery in Pyongyang (Lee and Garnier 2009: 401–402). While still living in the South, Choi had started to develop his own international taekwondo network,

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which became formalized in 1966 as the International Taekwondo Federation (ITF). This organization apparently moved with him fijirst to Canada and then to North Korea and he remained its President until his death, when he was succeeded by Professor Chang Ung, who also happens to be the North Korean IOC member. However, his initial succession was by no means smooth with accusations of unilateral appointment rather than formal election, missing ITF funds (US$ 160,000 purloined by the North?), and legal claims lodged by disafffected ITF members (ITF 2007). According to Choi’s son, however, in addition to training taekwondo teachers, the ITF back in the 1970s became increasingly infijiltrated by North Korean spy organizations, who even planned unsuccessfully in 1982 to assassinate South Korean President Chun on a trip to Canada (South China Morning Post, 10 September 2008). Whether or not that claim is true, it is certain that North Korea has utilized the ITF as a means of facilitating the martial art’s globalization and improving North Korea’s international image. Exemplifying that role is the fact that the 17th ITF World Championships were hosted by Pyongyang in September 2011. Taekwondo has been an offfijicial Olympic sport since the 2000 Sydney Olympics, but it is the rival World Taekwondo Federation (WTF), founded in 1973 and headquartered in Seoul, which sets the rules and manages the competitions that feed into the Olympics and associated regional games. There are minor diffferences in technical and doctrinal aspects between the ITF and the WTF, which derive from what simplistically can be seen as a diffferentiation between the WTF as a full-contact Olympic sport and the ITF as a semi-contact martial art, but the political gap has proved larger. Occasional discussions have taken place about cooperation and even unifying. A series of working level meetings during 2002–2005 did lead to a meeting of the Presidents of ITF and WTF and the inauguration of a Coordination Committee for Taekwondo Integration in Beijing in March 2007. Five meetings were held of this committee through to September 2008, but no defijinite conclusions were reached and despite the intermittent intervention of IOC President Rogge the two organizations still remain separated (I.T.F. Newsletter, December 2008). Regardless of the ITF’s activities, the WTF has come under some pressure in recent years as the IOC seemed to be willing to eliminate taekwondo in favour of other sports vying for Olympic status, so the WTF has reduced the size of the ring and altered kicking rules in time for the London Olympics to make the sport more entertaining and hopefully thereby retain its full Olympic status (Korea, February 2012).

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Although North Korea’s World Cup run had eventually ended in tears, the North continued to be interested in participating in other sporting mega-events, such as the Asian Games in Guangzhou in November 2010, when the North’s athletes came home with thirty-six medals, which was a slight improvement over their performance at the 2006 Doha Asian Games, and the February 2011 Asian Winter Games in Astana-Almaty, Kazakstan, when a bronze medal was won, the fijirst such medal for eight years. In the New Year joint editorial carried in the major media organs on 1 January 2011, it was declared that ‘A hot wind of sports should be raised in all parts of the country to make Songun Korea widely known as a football and sports power’ (KCNA 2011a). In March 2011 Kim Jong Il urged the ‘rapid development’ of sports. After watching a synchronized swimming performance, he called for further development of swimmers in this event. Underscoring the ‘need to improve sport techniques and training methods’, Kim set out a number of tasks and guidelines for developing sports standards in general (BBC Monitoring Asia-Pacifijic, 24 March 2011). Two projects seemed to be already under way. One was the creation of three new physical education universities during 2010; the fijirst new ones since the Pyongyang one had been created back in the late 1950s, these comprehensive training institutions were set up in North Hwanghae, South Hamgyong and North Pyongan provinces apparently by upgrading existing provincial colleges. Students as young as fourteen years old would be admitted, depending on their skills and maturity, and then spend seven years undergoing intensive sports skills training as well as taking foreign language courses (Vantage Point, July 2010). The other project was the opening in July 2010, on the occasion of a visit to Pyongyang by Mohamed bin Hamman, the President of the Asian Football Confederation, of a new training camp for the national football team; this was constructed under FIFA’s ‘Goal Project’ which helps underdeveloped countries build football fijields and related facilities (Vantage Point, September 2010). As one close observer of the North Korean football scene notes: football ‘is the game the North Koreans love and it captures their imagination’ (Bonner 2007: 79). The women’s football team in the North has a particularly strong reputation and it has regularly been ranked in the top ten of teams globally, much higher than the South, since the late 1990s. Undoubtedly there were high expectations placed on the squad competing in the Women’s World Cup fijinals in Germany in July 2011. However, despite the encouraging signs from an earlier impressive display in winning the 2006 FIFA Under-20s

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World Championships and even the creation of a popular TV serial loosely based on the team, and broadcast in the days leading up to the tournament, the young team was out of its depth. Drawn in another ‘group of death’ like their male counterparts in the 2010 World Cup, the North Korean women lost two games (both to eventual semi-fijinalists) and drew one, without scoring a goal. The coach blamed a lightning strike during a training session in Korea, which had meant that several players were briefly hospitalized, for their relatively poor performances. However, two players had been banned by FIFA from the fijinal game after testing positive for drugs and worse was to follow as a total of fijive players then tested positive for steroids, even though the team coach was quick to explain that the fijive had been given a traditional Chinese medicine, musk deer gland, to speed their recovery from the earlier lightning strike (Chosun Ilbo, 20 July 2011). FIFA President Blatter commented that ‘We are confronted with a very, very bad case of doping and it hurts’ (ESPN.com 16 July 2011; BBC news 16 July 2011). In August 2011 FIFA handed down its penalties, suspending the fijive players and the team doctor, fijining North Korea the equivalent of its prize money for coming thirteenth in the competition, and banning its team from the next Women’s World Cup in 2015 (FIFA 2011). 7.4. Pyeongchang Victory In July 2011, however, the North not only found itself in the forefront of what may yet prove to be one of the biggest sports doping scandals for several decades but it was also confronted by yet another sporting and diplomatic triumph for the South. At the third time of asking, the city of Pyeongchang, in the border province of Gangwon, succeeded in winning the hosting of the Winter Olympics – the 2018 Games. The South Korean dream of hosting the Winter Olympics can be dated back to the mid-1990s and its successful hosting of the 1999 Asian Winter Games became a kind of test run for a more concerted bid in the 2000s (Merkel and Kim 2011: 2371). Endorsed by the KOC, the city of Pyeongchang had applied twice before and on both occasions had lost out narrowly to the eventual winners; it had lost to Vancouver by three votes in the second round for the 2010 Games and by four votes to Russia’s Sochi in the second round of voting for the 2014 Games (Merkel and Kim 2011: 2371–4). This time Pyeongchang won by an overwhelming margin, very unusually (as even IOC President Rogge noted) defeating its rivals in the fijirst round (Korea Herald, 7 and 8 July 2011).

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A number of factors contributed to the win this time. First, the basic approach and message was changed. Instead of focusing on the role that the Games might play in bringing peace to a divided peninsula, a concept which had been incorporated in diffferent ways into the two earlier bid campaigns, this time the focus was on how winter sports could be spread to Asia – it did no harm that the charming Kim Yu-na, world gold medallist in fijigure-skating at the Vancouver Winter Olympics, was part of the bid team. The bid slogan – ‘New Horizons’ – surely had resonance with IOC members as well as those commercial companies hoping to tap into the North-east Asian winter sports market. Second, having noticed how decisive a role Russian President Putin had played in securing the Sochi Winter Olympics four years earlier, President Lee Myung-bak, who had been under some pressure over the stalemate in relations with North Korea and domestic policy problems, expended a great deal of personal efffort to support the bid (practising his own speech so many times on the seventeenhour flight from Seoul that he almost went hoarse) and spending several days in Durban lobbying IOC members. Third, sheer perseverance and good organization – the famed ‘can do’ spirit of the Koreans – was widely admired. The bid made certain commitments about completing facilities and stadiums in time for 2018, but the Koreans’ past record of hosting sporting mega-events, such as the 1988 Seoul Olympics and the co-hosted 2002 Football World Cup, shows that they will deliver on time and in good order. An important part of the legacy will be associated infrastructure developments, roads and high-speed railway links. Local politicians and construction enthusiasts are already floating ambitious plans and part of the challenge for the government will be trying to reduce pork-barrel expectations into fijinancially and environmentally realistic projects (Chosun Ilbo, 8 July 2011). But, almost before the bid team was back in Seoul, another challenge appeared: North Korea. Opposition politicians in Seoul initially joined in the general praise for the successful bid and promised to support new legislation to create national-level funding support, but they also began to float the idea of utilizing the bid as a means of improving relations with North Korea and possibly even arranging some kind of co-hosting. Pyeongchang is in Gangwon province, the only province on the Korean peninsula which is efffectively divided into two by the DMZ. For the second of the two earlier bids, the head of the North Korean NOC actually came out publicly in support of the Pyeongchang bid. This time, given the high degree of tensions with the North during the previous year or so, after the sinking of the Cheonan warship and the shelling

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of Yeonpyong island, plus the ongoing but stalled talks about denuclearizing the North, no public word came from the North. The South was probably relieved that at least the North did not try to sabotage the bid in some way. However, rumours did circulate later that the North had actually voted for the rival Munich bid (Korea Times, 26 July 2011). North Korea refrained from any immediate public comment on the result in Durban, but the North’s IOC member, Chang Ung, visiting Tokyo for an Olympic Council of Asia meeting the following week, graciously complemented Kim Yu-na while also showing that he was not above picking up on the co-hosting idea (South China Morning Post, 14 July 2011; Merkel and Kim 2011: 2379). No doubt depressed at yet another ‘diplomatic’ victory for the South, the North may yet hope to obtain a slice of the action. But at least three obstacles remain: the IOC regulations that Olympic Games are awarded to a single city, the South Korean and IOC memories of past inter-Korean sporting negotiations, and the question marks over the North’s ability to provide adequate and open facilities. Historically, there have been no examples of co-hosted Olympic Games, so it would require special dispensation from the IOC to allow any such co-hosting. An IOC representative was quick to point out that there was no possibility of that happening. Politically, the experiences and memories of the run-up to the 1988 Seoul Olympics, when the North lobbied the IOC for a co-hosting role (see Chapter 5) were unlikely to fijind favour with either the South Koreans or the IOC. In the mid-1980s, North Korea did embark on an impressive construction programme for sporting facilities, which can be seen today in Pyongyang, but it proved reluctant to make those commitments to open up its society to athletes, spectators and journalists in way that would satisfy the IOC. Those effforts in the late 1980s must have impacted on the North Korean economy and it is doubtful whether the North Korean economy today could stand up to such expenditure in its mountainous southern borders. Despite recent moves to create special economic zones on its peripheries, the North also seems reluctant to open its wider society to outsiders. Neither the Lee administration nor the South Korean NOC want to go far down the road of talking about co-hosting or even a joint team until the North makes conciliatory moves in other policy areas. Indeed, both the Lee government and the IOC were quick to put a damper on any cohosting idea, but a revival of the joint team or joint march in to the opening ceremony can be expected to remain a potent topic (DailyNK, 13 July 2011; Merkel and Kim 2011: 2378–9). With parliamentary and presidential elections in the South in, respectively, April and December 2012 this idea

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of a joint team, joint march or even co-hosting will certainly not go away, not least because how to approach the North in policy terms will certainly be an issue in the forefront of those election campiagns. The new president, who will just be ending his/her term in offfijice when the February 2018 Winter Games are held, will certainly have to confront the issue. However, President Lee was given one more sporting moment in the sun in 2011. At the end of August 2011 he was able to preside over the opening ceremony of the IAAF’s World Athletic Championships, held in Daegu. Becoming only the seventh country to be host to the so-called ‘big four’ sporting mega-events – summer Olympics, winter Olympics (coming in 2018), football World Cup, and the IAAF world championships – this marked yet another triumph for South Korean sports diplomacy. North Korea, signifijicantly, declined to send any athletes to the Daegu IAAF Championships, even though as late as one month before the championships opened the Chairman of the ruling GNP, Hong Chun-pyo, was still calling on North Korea to ‘make a decision to promote peaceful coexistence in the Korean peninusla’ by attending (BBC Monitoring AsiaPacifijic, 28 July 2011). No South Korean athlete was able to win a medal, though that had admittedly been a hard ask anyway, and there were empty seats for some events, but in the somewhat sarcastic words of one journalist the championships had been ‘bordering on successful’ (Times, 3 September 2011). However, such minor carping apart, from the South Korean government’s and the South Korean people’s perspectives this was another success for sports diplomacy.

7.5. Succession in the North Only the second ever succession in the top leadership in the North was brought about by the sudden death of Kim Jong Il on 17 December 2011. Immediately, his third son, Kim Jong Un, still under the age of thirty and relatively unknown outside (and even inside) the country, was installed as the ‘Great Successor’. Whereas Kim Jong Il had been in training for and had gained considerable practical policy-making experience over more than a decade before Kim Il Sung died, Kim Jong Un had far less opportunity to gain experience before his father died. Although promoted to be a General in September 2010 and frequently involved in subsequent inspection visits to military and non-military sites around the country with his father, he has had little direct contact with foreign offfijicials and politicians, beyond a few senior Chinese visitors. The succession process appears on

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the surface to have been stable, with the military and KWP elite quickly pledging their loyalty and those key members of the Kim family actually back in Pyongyang keeping a watching brief. Kim Jong Un has publicly tried to create a more friendly persona on his visits, but little is really known about his policy preferences. However, in a society where Confucianstyle succession would normally be to the eldest son, it has to be assumed that Kim Jong Un was chosen as the successor because he was the son most likely to carry on his father’s and grandfather’s policies and legacy (Cossa 2011). As such, rapid or dramatic policy change is unlikely. The 1 January 2012 joint media editorial was the fijirst opportunity to check on whether new policy directions might be forthcoming under the new leader. Understandably, much of the text was devoted to remembering Kim Jong Il and his ‘tireless’ and ‘energetic’ leadership, while considerable space was devoted, as in the previous year, to the needs for economic development. However, in the context of the aspiration to ‘surpass the standards of world civilization in all spheres of social life’, particular mention was made of sports: ‘The heated enthusiasm for sports should be encouraged further by enhancing social interest in physical culture and sports and making them part of people’s everyday life and habit’ (KCNA 2012). One day earlier, the KWP’s Central Committee and Central Military Commission had issued a series of ‘joint calls’ for the forthcoming celebration of Kim Il Sung’s birth centenary, which included one call very similar in phraseology to that in the joint editorial, namely: ‘Make physical culture and sports mass-based and part of everyday life to be fully ready for labour and national defence!’ However, one additional call singled out football: ‘Let us make our country a football and sports power!’ (KCNA 2011b). On inter-Korean relations and reunifijication, there was critical coverage of the South Korean ‘authorities’ (President Lee was not mentioned by name) for increasing confrontation, ‘driving inter-Korean relations towards catastrophe’ and ignoring proposals for talks emanating from the North (KCNA 2012). This critical approach has been continued through the early months of 2012, with little indication that the North is willing to enter into dialogue with the South (rejecting the South’s enquiries about some form of talks over divided families and other socio-economic issues). Given that the Lee administration in the South also sees little value in changing its approach at this time, a breakthrough in North-South relations is unlikely. Although late February 2012 did see a potentially important step forward in North Korean-US relations with an agreement that the North would suspend its uranium-enrichment programme and allow IAEA inspectors to return to its Yongbyon nuclear site while the

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United States would provide ‘nutritional’ support (food shipments), this deal was not directly linked to any progress on North-South Korean relations (Haggard and Ryu 2012). Indeed, North Korea’s rocket launch ostensibly to put a satellite into space in mid-April 2012, even though it failed, only served to draw US, South Korean and Japanese criticism and stymie the apparent progress in US-North Korean relations while doing nothing to improve North-South relations. With the North focused on celebrating 2012 as the hundredth anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s birth and the South gearing up for presidential elections after the National Assembly elections in mid-April, the status quo of non-contact is likely to remain in place long enough to prevent any sporting coming together for the London Olympics.

CHAPTER EIGHT

SPORTING SYSTEMS TODAY In considering the various factors at play in inter-Korean sporting relations today, one aspect which does have an impact on the two Koreas’ ability – or inability – to cooperate is the difffering sporting systems and philosophies, in terms of the policy priorities, structures and capabilities that have emerged over time. 8.1. The North Korean Model The North Korean sporting system today shares certain characteristics of its neighbour China’s and the former Soviet bloc countries’ approaches to sporting development. Youth organizations and district sports schools are equipped to search for talent, special training facilities have been created within the military (KPA) and sports universities, there is a strong emphasis on persistent fijitness and strength training over many hours and days, and a strong sense of control remains in the hands of coaches and, above them, senior fijigures within the sporting and even political leadership elite. However, before these talented youngsters enter professional or national teams, in many sports it is the parents who are forced to be responsible for basic living costs as well as ‘compensations’ for trainers and coaches (liquor, cigarettes, etc), so the burden on non-afffluent families can be severe (Yoo 2009). In particular, provincial games between individual schools or clubs, which take place around two to four times a year, can be a huge burden to the club members because support from the state does not reach provincial clubs. Rather, all expenses for provincial games are the responsibility of the players, the schools, or the clubs (DailyNK, 27 September 2007). However, once chosen to join a national squad, as happened in the case of Choi Hyun Mi, who was recruited in 2003 to join the newly-created women’s boxing squad in anticipation of women’s boxing being accepted as an Olympic sport (not yet achieved), athletes are encouraged with more food and a cash allowance (South China Morning Post, 29 October 2008). Education in North Korea is free and universal and normally children  attend four years of elementary/primary school and six years of

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secondary/senior middle school, up to the age of fijifteen. They are expected to participate in group sports activities: football, basketball and table tennis are played outdoors at schools and in parks in the warmer months, with ice-skating popular in winter (Hassig and Oh 2009: 157). Within this regular school system there is a well-developed system of specialized sporting ‘circles’ or club activities and the amount of time devoted to sporting lessons seems to be increasing (conversation with North Korean offfijicial, August 2011). In addition to these regular schools, however, there exist special purpose schools, which were originally developed to take care of the children of revolutionaries who died during the Korean War, but which now specialize in activities such as sports, arts, foreign languages, and science. The search for talent begins at the primary school level. One example is the Jangchung primary school in Pyongyang which for three consecutive years has won the girls team table tennis competition at the annual Jongilbong Prize National Schoolchildren’s Sports Meeting; ‘pupils with a suitable physical constitution and those who were interested in table tennis were admitted to the [table tennis] circle’ (Korea Today, December 2010). At the secondary level, suitable students are moved to specialist ‘juvenile sports schools’, although some students join as young as at the age of eight. Those with particular talent may be sent to specialist training centres, such as the table-tennis training centre at Nampo, which reportedly was constructed using the winnings of one-time table-tennis World Champion Pak Yong Sun at various international championships or the fijigure skating school at the Pyongyang Skating Rink (Martin 2004: 596; Yoo 2009). Some Pyongyang juvenile sports schools, such as Pothonggang and Rangnang district schools, have developed expertise in football, providing players for under-16 and under-19 national teams; ‘offfijicials and instructors visited primary and secondary schools in the district to select recruits on the basis of concrete study of physical fijitness and intellectual faculties of the pupils aspiring to be footballers’ (Korea Today, February and May 2011). Graduates of these kinds of sports schools do go on to play for adult teams such as the April 25 club, Amrokgang, Rimyongsu and other Pyongyang sports teams. The April 25 football club, which is basically the KPA team, was founded in 1949 as the Central Sports Training School team but its name was changed in 1971 to reflect the military foundation date; it has proved to be the most successful football club in North Korea. Amrokgang football club is said to be afffijiliated to the Ministry of People’s Security (efffectively the national police).

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However, the efffectiveness of the regular school system for ‘discovering’ and nurturing potentially talented children for sports undoubtedly has been afffected, at least in towns and rural areas outside Pyongyang, by problems such as the mid-1990s famine when schools were shut down or children went absent (conceivably either looking for food or too weak to attend), continuing food shortages subsequently, the lingering efffects of malnutrition on the height of children, and a broken-down medical system (Haggard and Noland 201: 45–55; Hassig and Oh 2009: 123–9; Schwekendiek 2011: 69, 113–14). A recent analysis, based on United Nationscollected data, has suggested that around two-thirds of all North Korean children under the age of ten are sufffering from growth disorders related to malnutrition, with more remote provinces showing far worse results than the Pyongyang area (Chosun Ilbo, 26 March 2012). These factors no doubt also impact on sporting activities by young people after they leave school. One North Korean defector has commented, in the context of a World Health Organization report on the rising incidence of smoking amongst young North Korean adults, that ‘many have little to eat and don’t do activities such as sports, so they smoke instead’ (Korea Times, 22 March 2012). An impression of the kind of life-style of the selected young athletes can be found in the British documentary fijilm, ‘A State of Mind’, which follows the experiences of two young state-trained girl gymnasts preparing for the 2003 Arirang mass games festival (Gordon 2004). While diffferent from those young athletes being trained for Olympic or other international sporting event teams, there are nonetheless surely similarities in terms of the balance of schooling versus training in the schoolchildren’s lives and the attendant privileges for the families as a whole. As Sonia Ryang comments: ‘They are highly accomplished young gymnasts who have been loftily rewarded already at their young ages’, even though they have to ‘practice mass game routines every day, year-round’ (Ryang 2009: 76). Successful adult athletes can be rewarded with one of three titles. ‘Merit Athlete’ is the lowest of the three categories; awarded since 1960, it is given to those who make ‘distinguished contributions’. The ‘People’s Athlete’ award started from 1966 for those athletes with ‘combative spirit and high athletic technique’. According to the North Korean media a total of 320 athletes were given one or other of these two awards during the years from 1986 (presumably the starting point because of Kim Jong Il’s famous pronouncement on sports policy that year) to 2001. The most

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distinguished award, ‘Labour Hero’, is given rarely to athletes and is reserved for gold medal winners at the Olympics or world championships (Yonhap 2003: 495–6). An example of ‘People’s Athlete’ is judoka Kye Son Hi, who won four golds at the Judo World Championships as well as three Olympic medals during her appearances in three diffferent weight classes. Jong Song Ok, gold medal winner of the women’s marathon at the 1999 World Championships, received both the ‘People’s Athlete’ and the ‘Labour Heroine’ awards (DailyNK website, 16 March 2010). Moon Ki Nam, a former national-level soccer coach who defected from North Korea in 2004, told journalists before the 2010 World Cup that players were rewarded with apartments if they succeeded internationally, but that they were sometimes sent to coal mines if they lost; while this comment elicited some amusement on sporting blogs, this information remains unverifijied (New York Times, 20 December 2011. See also the interview with a medal-winning judoka who did receive an apartment before defecting (Jung 2012) ). At the very least, however, sporting success can bring some rewards at least in terms of housing and permission to reside in Pyongyang. In a society in which social advancement is closely restricted by the KWP and the state structures and regulations, sport does constitute one way of overcoming otherwise extensive measures of social control over employment, residence and travel. North Korea, which for so long was reluctant to publicly admit to physical and mental disabilities other than war injuries amongst its population and has been accused of sending disabled persons into ‘internal exile’, has never participated in the Paralympics. However, in January 2010, a Korean Sports Association for the Disabled was set up and in late 2011 this body approached the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) with a view to afffijiliating in time for athletes to participate in the London 2012 Olympics. Table-tennis could be one option for the North’s disabled athletes (Vantage Point, January 2012: 37). However, as of February 2012, North Korea had not yet set up an efffective national paralympic committee, registered with the IPC, which would be a necessary fijirst step in order to send athletes to London. Organizationally, the NOC leadership has close ties with KWP and the government and fijinancially it is dependent on the government. Pak Myong Chol, who has been Minister of Physical Culture and Sports since 2010, is also a member of the KWP’s Central Committee, a Councillor for the powerful National Defence Commission and most of the time since 1993 has been Chairman of the North Korean NOC. He is also the son-in-law of former professional Korean-Japanese wrestler Rikidozan and is said to be a

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close confijidant of Jang Song Taek, Kim Jong Il’s powerful brother-in-law (Chosun Ilbo, 20 July 2011; North Korea Leadership Watch website, July 2011). Chang Ung has been the North’s offfijicial IOC member since 1996, but he is also Vice-Chairman of the NOC and President of the International Taekwondo Federation. He is also said to be responsible for handling the fijinances of the Ministry of Physical Culture and Sport, including allegedly funding to ‘import the various ingredients needed to make performanceenhancing drugs’ (Chosun Ilbo, 20 July 2011). The Ministry of Physical Culture and Sport oversees the Sports Science Research Institute, which is responsible for the collection and dispersion to schools and sports establishments of technical materials and advanced training techniques relating to various sports, but it has also been accused of operating two plants on the outskirts of Pyongyang that manufacture performance-enhancing drugs which are ‘disguised as tonics or nutritional supplements’ (Korea Today, February 2011; Chosun Ilbo, 20 July 2011). While the North does not allow the commercialization of sport in the same way as happens in the South (to be discussed below), there have been signs from the early 2000s that the North has not been above receiving some form of external sponsorship for equipment and uniforms for its national teams. Western company logos were noticed on uniforms used in 2001 sporting events held in North Korea, such as the Mt Paektu world fijigure-skating festival and the Mangyongdae Prize marathon (Yonhap 2003: 490, 492). But, since then the North has negotiated a major sponsorship deal with the Italian apparel fijirm, Legea, which initially sponsored the playing kit for the 2010 Football World Cup but then in mid-2011 negotiated a new four-year deal to cover both the men’s and women’s national football teams (North Korea Economy Watch, 4 April 2011). As might be expected, Chinese companies have also been involved. Chinese stateowned clothing company New Yalu Group sponsored the North Korean Winter Olympic team at Turin in 2006; they marched into the opening ceremony sporting Yalu parkas (Associated Press, 24 February 2006). Chinese apparel company, Hongxing Erke, sponsored the North Korean athletes’ uniforms for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Costing Erke US$2–3 million, this was ‘a very painful process’, according to one company executive: Erke had to scrub plans for a marketing event timed to the Games’ opening because of red tape and bureaucracy and North Korean NOC offfijicials would communicate only by email, not by phone (Wall Street Journal (Asia), 14 August 2008). A television drama about the women’s football team, launched on domestic North Korean television in June 2011, on the eve of that summer’s women’s football World Cup, featured the team’s

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coach wearing a FILA jacket (FILA, originally an Italian company, is now owned by South Koreans) (North Korea Economy Watch, 23 June 2011). North Korean athletes have also received some assistance from international bodies including the IOC. For example, in 1998, when the famine was having a serious impact on lives inside the North, the IOC, through the Chinese NOC, sent food, medicines and sports equipment to those athletes preparing for Asian and Olympic Games (Olympic Review, AugustSeptember 1998: 56). From late 2008 through to early 2010, under a scheme for impoverished countries, the IOC provided a total of US$115,200 worth of fijinancial support for the training of fijive winter sports athletes, two of whom took part in the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, though without winning a medal (Yonhap, 6 March 2010, cited in North Korea Economy Watch website, April 2011).

8.2. The South Korean System In the South, sports policy development has relied both on strong input from the top (particularly under certain presidents, such as Park Chung-hee) as well as a network of inter-locking governmental and semigovernmental organizations. The South Korean Olympic Committee (KOC) and the Korea Sports Council (KSC) are closely afffijiliated with each other; in fact, one person, currently Park Yong-sung, holds the presidency of both organizations, even though they have diffferent secretary-generals and stafff. Coming from running his well-known family Doosan business company, Park, who has been KOC President since 2009, was also one of Korea’s IOC members from 2002 to 2007, although he was suspended during 2006–2007 after being being found guilty of unethical behaviour before being pardoned by President Roh Moo-hyun. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST), which formally came into being in February 2008 after having been designated as the Ministry of Culture and Tourism for the previous decade, has a Sports Bureau and is primarily concerned with elite sports. The names and competences of the various divisions under the sports bureau have changed frequently since the early 1990s and currently consist of four divisions: Sports Policy Division, Sports Promotion Division, International Sports Division, and Persons with Disabilities Culture & Sports Division (MCST website, July 2011). Not only do the internal structures of the main policymaking ministry change frequently, but so too do the Ministers in charge, leading to problems of continuity in overall policy direction. Most of the

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Ministers have come from an arts background, not a sporting one. Choung Byoung-gug, a three-term politician from the Grand National Party did have experience of chairing the relevant National Assembly committee, but he was in offfijice for little more than half a year before he was replaced in August 2011 by Choe Kwang-sik, a historian and the head of the Cultural Heritage Administration. Choung’s immediate predecessor, Yoo In-chon, a former actor and academic, did serve for over two years but his own predecessor, Kim Jong-min, lasted less than one year. Another one of his predecessors, Lee Chang-dong, Minister during 2003–2004, described taking up the post as being forced to take a ‘bitter cup’. In addition to the MCST’s involvement, the Ministry of Education supervises school sports, which inevitably leads to some separation in responsibilities and funding from the other aspects of sport being supervised by MCST. Physical education is compulsory for fijirst to tenth grades in schools and elective in eleventh and twelfth grades, but the number of hours devoted to sport and physical education has actually declined slowly over the decades and, if anything, pressure for further reductions in hours are increasing, not least, educational experts argue, because ‘students and parents do not pay much attention to P.E. [physical education], which plays no part in college scholastic ability tests’ (Kang and You 2005: 574–7). However, effforts to expand the installation of artifijicial turf for school playgrounds and urethane for running tracks during the 2000s were intended to act as encouragement to students and teachers to develop sporting activities (Cho 2010: 109). Another important institution in South Korean sports development is the Seoul Olympic Sports Promotion Foundation (SOSFO). SOSFO was formed in 1989 after the Seoul Olympic Games in order to expand sports facilities and facilitate training experiences. Utilizing the profijits that were generated in the Olympic Games (US$311 million) as well as existing funds from the National Sports Promotion Foundation, SOSFO has established appropriate businesses to increase the fund, which nowadays include bicycle and motorboat races, Totto and Protto betting shops, the Olympic Parktel hotel, golf courses and income from restaurants and businesses that are located inside the Olympic Park. SOSFO now brings the majority of funding to Korean sports (for example, around 55.3 % of the total sports budget in 2007). SOSFO supports the KOC-KSC, the National Council of Sport-for-All, Korea Sports Association for the Disabled, Korea Institute of Recreation, Korean Aerobics Association, Korea Cycle Federation, Korea Baseball Association, and other sports associations, as well as the Korea Institute of Sport Science (Gonzalez 2007).

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In fact, corporate Korea is closely involved in sports, especially the professional sports leagues as well as the Olympic-targetted elite sports development and, for example, contributed time, efffort and funding to the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics bid. Although under the Park and Chun governments the chaebol had no option but to follow governmental orders to invest in sport, after democratization they continued to be involved, in part ‘to raise their company profijiles through public relations and to demonstrate social responsibility’ (Hong 2011: 985). The Korean fijinancial crisis of 1997–98 had a devastating impact on the chaebol and their associated professional sports teams and it has been estimated that at least forty-six teams folded during 1997–98; ten teams being liquidated in the January-March 1998 period alone (Shin 2007: 18; Hong 2011: 986). Although by the early 2000s the economy and the chaebol had bounced back, the support of professional sport was slower to recover. Nonetheless, the professional leagues are still running, the corporate circles are still the main sponsors (even though they frequently run their clubs at a fijinancial loss), and involvement in Olympic-related events remains attractive to the biggest chaebol. In the early 2000s, no doubt inspired by the 2002 World Cup and its surrounding euphoria, football spectatorship went into an upswing, but that momentum has slowed in recent years, with professional baseball now experiencing a boom. The winning of a gold medal at the Beijing Olympics by the national baseball team seems to have sparked the renaissance, with the total crowds in 2011 surpassing the six million mark for the fijirst time ever for any professional sport in South Korea (Chosun Ilbo, 14 September 2011). Although not involved in a domestic professional league in the same way as sports such as baseball, football, etc, professional golf proved to be another growth industry from the late 1990s. In fact, the success of Pak Se-ri in winning her fijirst major championship on the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) tour in 1998 seemed to open the floodgates to Korean female golfers, who have become a sizeable and flourishing presence on the LPGA tour around the world, indeed becoming the largest national group within that tour as early as 2003. Initially supported by Samsung, Pak in 1998 signed a major sponsorship deal with the Cheil Jedang chaebol and was awarded the Order of Sports Merit, the second highest medal given by the Korean government for sports performance (Shin and Nam 2004). In 2007, she became the youngest ever female golfer to be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame and by mid-2011 she had earned over US$11million in her career. When Y.E. Yang became the fijirst male Korean golfer to win a major championship in 2009 he generously

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paid tribute to Pak, saying that her victory in the 1998 United States Open, ‘really created a huge boom in Korea golf-wise where everybody started picking up clubs instead of tennis rackets and baseball bats.’ (New York Times, 17 August 2009). The most influential Korean businessman in sport in recent years has been Samsung Group chief Lee Kun-hee, who had become an IOC member in 1996. Despite having resigned in 2008 from Samsung over corruption and tax evasion charges, Lee Kun-hee was pardoned in December 2009 by President Lee specifijically because he was needed for this Pyeongchang bid campaign (the IOC quickly reinstated him too, although with the proviso that he could not sit on any IOC Commissions for fijive years). Hanjin Group chairman Cho Yang-ho acted as the head of the bid committee and reportedly attended over thirty international sporting events in two years in order to lobby IOC members. All the major chaebol and companies contributed fijinancially to the bid campaign (Korea Herald, 7 July 2011). These major Korean companies feel that they must support these sporting megaevents and elite sport in Korea partly for patriotic reasons (no big company wants to seem churlish or politically incorrect by not supporting such events) but also because they foresee commercial opportunities. The strong commercial element is one of the aspects which most clearly distinguishes the South Korean from the North Korean sports system. Leading sports stars such as skater Kim Yu-na, swimmer Park Tae-hwan, and footballer Park Ji-sung can make plenty of lucrative deals for endorsements and sponsorship. Kim Yu-na, for example, has a sponsorship portfolio including Nike, Hyundai, Samsung, Korean Air and Kookmin Bank that contributed to annual earnings of US$9.7 million in 2009–10, according to Forbes (Forbes.com, 18 August 2010). She has also released a number of hit singles, two books, and is hosting ‘Kim Yu-na’s Kiss and Cry’ – a reality television show in which celebrities are trained to skate competitively by professional skaters. According to Cho Seongsik, Kim represents to those corporations keen to sponsor her ‘a perfect symbol of beauty, excellence, grace, success and nationalism’ (Cho 2010: 124). The sports and leisure industry itself is indeed one of the fastest-growing sectors of the economy; sales of the sports industry in 2003–2007 grew at well over GDP growth for the same period and by 2007 represented around 3,688 billion won (US$3 billion) in total (Cho 2010: 105, 108). But ‘non-sporting’ chaebol are heavily involved not just in sponsoring individual sports stars but also in owning professional sports teams and even sponsoring professional leagues. Samsung, for example, ‘owns fijifteen different sport teams ranging from the popular professional team sports

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[baseball, basketball, football and volleyball] to track and fijield, rugby, equestrian, badminton and wrestling’ (Cho 2010: 110–11). Among the top ten private corporations in South Korea, fijive of them owned a professional baseball team, as of 2009; Hyundai Motors, like Samsung, owned teams in all the four major professional sports (Cho 2010: 120). Samsung Anycall Basketball League, sponsored by the mobile phone division of Samsung from 1999 to 2006, is just one of three examples of professional leagues for which Samsung had acquired naming rights through its sponsorship (Korea Basketball League website). Reflecting the continued determination for elite sporting success, South Korean athletes in all disciplines have continued to use the Taenung national training centre, which is now well-equipped with all the necessary and cutting-edge facilities, including an international standard indoor skating rink, indoor swimming pool, physical fijitness centre, and multipurpose gymnasiums. In addition, a second national athletes’ training centre has been opened at high altitude (1,300 metres above sea level) on Mt Taebaek in Gangwon Province in order to provide athletes with a natural cardio-respiratory enhancement environment (summer training) as well as winter sports training. Now, a new Multiplex Training Centre is under construction and already partially opened at Jincheon, Chunchong province; this is designed to supersede Taenung in due course as the latter has no more space for expansion (Yoon 2010; Korea Joongang Daily, 10 January 2012). Although such state-of-the-art facilities are clearly important, Choe Kwang-shik, the MCST Minister, no doubt reflected traditional thinking about elite sportsmen and women in his words of encouragement to those athletes aspiring to represent South Korea in the London Olympics: ‘Sports are honest as the result comes from how much you sweat and devote your passion in your usual training session. In London, we hope to see the fruit of your effforts’ (Korea Joongang Daily, 10 January 2012). Like many other countries around the world, South Korea has adopted policies that try to propagate ‘sports for all’, particularly in the years since the Seoul Olympics though more obviously in the fijirst decade of the twenty-fijirst century. The National Council of Sport-for-All was established in 1991 to help organize sports clubs amongst local residents, company employees and handicapped people. The various sports promotion campaigns (or ‘plans’) dating from the early 1990s, however, in practice put most of their focus on elite and school sports while relatively fewer resources were devoted to creating structures and means for the general public, of whatever age or ability, to participate in sports. Certainly, sports

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participation ratios, as judged from governmental surveys, showed a positive increase from 19.4% of people surveyed being active in sports in 1986 to 44.1% two decades later, in 2006, but nonetheless specialists inside and outside of MCST felt that more could be done (Ju 2008: 201). Inadequate sports facilities across the country were identifijied as one important factor hampering participation. Consequently, a new programme to promote the formation of sports clubs across the major cities and provinces was instituted in 2006, with special government funding being chanelled to local governments (Ju 2008: 202). Two years later, in 2008, a new law to help foster martial arts amongst the public was passed; the Traditional Martial Arts Promotion Law was the fijirst governmental bill aimed at preserving and promoting the so-called traditional martial arts for health as well as cultural reasons (Park 2010). However, generally for Koreans, not just at school age but subsequently as working adults, the lack of time to carry out sports remains a signifijicant constraint on active exercise and sports participation. The culture of hard work and long hours on the job (or in the case of schoolchildren study for exams) has become deeply ingrained in Korean society and undoubtedly reduces both the willingness and the capability of ordinary Koreans to carry out physical exercise.

CHAPTER NINE

LESSONS FROM OTHER DIVIDED NATIONS As Alan Bairner and John Sugden have argued, ‘it is a truism that all societies are divided’, whether ethnically, socially, economically or demographically (Bairner and Sugden 1999: 2). Inevitably these divisions have an impact on how sport is developed, played and supported, and on how these societies are represented in the global sporting community. Politically-divided nations have provided particularly complex diplomatic and political problems to deal with in international politics. In this context, sporting contacts, which are frequently considered as ‘low’ politics, have also proved just as complex as the ‘high’ politics of diplomatic recognition by other states and representation in international political and economic organizations. Global sporting institutions from the IOC and FIFA through to international sporting federations have found the post1945 world a difffijicult one to navigate when faced with competing demands from divided or ‘part’ nations for recognition and representation. The Marquess of Exeter, an IOC Executive Board member and also President of the International Amateur Athletic Association (IAAF), wrote in 1965 that ‘One of the major problems with which both bodies [IOC and IAAF] have been faced since the war has been the three divided countries, China and Taiwan, South and North Korea, West and East Germany’ (NA 1965). Consequently, as the IOC’s own offfijicial history concludes: ‘The German question and the problems with China and Korea demonstrated all too clearly that the IOC cannot float in Olympic spheres, but that it must pay its tribute to Realpolitik’ (IOC 1995: 107). A signifijicant number of similarities in the Cold War experiences of the two Koreas and the two Germanies (from 1945 to 1990) have frequently prompted comparative studies of the evolving political situations and potentialities for unifijication, which was, of course, achieved in 1990 in the case of East and West Germany. While arguing (see below) that there are also some signifijicant diffferences between the two Koreas and the two Germanies, this chapter will outline the basic parameters and evolution of inter-German political and sporting interaction as a means of identifying whether there are any lessons for the Korean case. Yet, Germany is not the only state to be reunifijied in the post-war era. Two other states have been

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created, or re-created: a reunifijied Vietnam was forced out from the military struggle between North and South Vietnam (which ended in 1975) and new Yemen created from the merger of North and South Yemen in 1990. As will be elaborated further below, these three ‘new’ states were created by diffferent methods: Germany by collapse and absorption of one side by another; Vietnam by the military defeat of one side by another; and Yemen by negotiation and concession between the two sides. Apart from the two Koreas, however, one other structurally-divided nation exists: China and Taiwan. All these cases will be considered in this chapter. 9.1. Two Germanies Just as 1945 saw the division of Korea, so too did it mark the beginning of a new era for a divided Germany. Korea had been dragged into the Second World War only through being a colony of Japan and Koreans were to see themselves still at the mercy of great powers when the division was formalized, whereas (Nazi) Germany as a defeated aggressor state had fewer grounds for grievance as the four Allied powers (United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union) began to govern Germany by means of direct rule for more than a decade. As the Cold War deepened, West Germany (the Federal Republic of Germany – FRG) was closely linked with the West, while East Germany (the German Democratic Republic – GDR) came under the umbrella of the Soviet Union, apart from the old capital Berlin, which was divided amongst the four powers’ control. The 1949 West German Constitution proclaimed ‘the unity and freedom of Germany’ as its supreme national goal, while the equivalent East German document described ‘an indivisible democratic republic’ (Jonnson 2006: 13). The 1955 Paris Treaty included the formal commitment of the Western allies to unifijication, but there was a widespread feeling across Europe that the division could at least temporarily ‘provide an apparent solution to the perennial deutsche Frage’ (Hyde-Price 1991: 142–3). Tensions between the two Germanies naturally existed, but, from the mid-1950s at least until the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961, it was possible for limited visits by Germans across the border (far more from West to East than vice versa). However, from 1967, under Chancellor Willy Brandt, a more proactive ostpolitik was practised by West Germany. The so-called Hallstein doctrine of refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the East German government was abandoned and negotiations over closer contacts were initiated. In 1970 Brandt met his opposite number, Will Stoph, in the fijirst ever heads of

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government meetings and, in 1972, fijirst a transit treaty was signed to allow regular private visits and then the ground-breaking Basis of Relations Treaty was signed; the latter established the legal basis for a range of sociocultural contacts as well as telephone and postal communications. One year later both Germanies joined the United Nations. However, tensions remained in the bilateral relationship, not least over currency surcharges imposed on West German visitors to the East, throughout the remainder of the 1970s and into the 1980s, but Mikhail Gorbachev’s rise to power in the Soviet Union was to signifijicantly alter the dynamics of the bilateral relationship. Focusing on his own effforts to reconstruct and reform the Soviet Union, Gorbachev encouraged, or at least allowed, East European satellite states to pursue more independent policies. However, the East German leadership, under Erich Honecker, resisted calls for reform even though the economy was showing signs of strain and the population was becoming increasingly attracted by what it knew of West German life-styles and prosperity (not least by watching West German television). Frustrated East Germans began to try to emigrate via Hungary in the summer of 1989; internal demonstrations grew in number forcing Honecker to resign and in a hugely symbolic moment when the gates on the Berlin Wall were opened in early November 1989. Both Germanies put forward plans for unifijication and after some initial reluctance from the Soviet Union (Gorbachev was concerned about full NATO membership for the unifijied Germany) the four external powers supported the movement (two-plus-four talks). The unity treaty was signed in August 1990 and on 3 October 1990 East Germany acceded to West Germany and the new state with its new capital was created. Scholars and observers difffer on the reasons for this peaceful, relatively speedy and broadly successful unifijication (Jonnson 2006: 28–9; Hyde-Price 1991). The stronger West German economic record (and its magnetic efffect on ordinary East Germans), the ideological malaise in East Germany, the geopolitical changes wrought by Gorbachev’s arrival in power, and popular demands on both sides of the border all contributed. 9.2. The Two Yemens Yemeni history has been deeply impacted by colonialism. The British occupied Aden in 1839, while the Turkish Ottoman Empire extended its influence into the region a decade later and a border between the northern and southern colonies was established in 1905. The northern part

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became independent with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and after many vicissitudes the Yemen Arab Republic (North Yemen) was created in 1962. Five years later the British left Aden, which then became independent as the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen). As such the division of Yemen had much to do with Western colonial policies and almost nothing to do with the end of the Second World War, unlike the cases of Korea, Germany and Vietnam (Hwang 1994: 292). The South soon developed relations with the socialist block and implemented Sovietstyle structures and practices, while the North managed to get military and economic aid from both sides of the Iron Curtain while remaining a broadly pro-West republican state. Intermittent fijighting broke out in the early 1970s until an Arab League-brokered peace deal in 1972 seemed to herald a process towards a unifijied Republic of Yemen. However, assassinations of presidents, inter-tribal rivalries, refugee flows and difffering expectations of external partners slowed progress. Another attempt to promote unifijication, reflected in an agreed draft constitution settled in 1982, also ran into the sand, as the North feared being absorbed by the Marxist South. However, in 1988–89 prospects began to look up, in part encouraged by the prospects of jointly exploiting oil and gas deposits; by the end of 1989 the new constitution had been published and cross-border travel and communication restrictions lifted. In May 1990 the North and South, after years of bitter conflict, merged into the Republic of Yemen. Sanaa became the political capital, while Aden functioned as its economic capital; the North’s leader, Ali Abdullah Saleh, became president while the South’s former head of state became prime minister. With the marked decline in Soviet aid in the late 1980s, the poorer South had little option but to agree to join with its oil-exporting economically-stronger northern neighbour (Hwang 1994: 283–4). As Gabriel Jonnson has noted, some scholars have seen this unifijication process as one coming ‘from above’, with the two governments taking the lead and almost no direct popular involvement (although there was considerable popular enthusiasm as the unifijication approached), by contrast with the German case, which to some extent can be characterized as coming ‘from below’ as East German citizens voted with their feet (Jonnson 2006: 41; Hwang 1994: 292). Civil war in 1994 threatened to tear the country apart again, but military successes by the northern army ensured a continued unifijied state. Nonetheless, Yemen remains one of the poorest and most unstable Middle Eastern states and President Saleh’s thirty-year rule only ended in early 2012 after being challenged by southern separatists, northern rebels, al-Qaeda militants and local versions of the ‘Arab spring’ mass protests calling for his resignation.

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9.3. Two Vietnams The French colonial empire in Indochina, with modern-day Vietnam as its flagship, which had been established in stages in the second half of the nineteenth century, came to a conflictual and messy end. The rise of Vietnamese communism was, however, closely interlinked with the emergence of new strains of nationalism in the 1920s and 1930s. With the end of wartime Japanese control in 1945, the communists, led by Ho Chi Minh, declared independence, but soon found themselves up against returning French forces. The fijirst war of resistance ended in the famous Vietnamese victory at Dien Bien Phu and the 1954 Geneva Agreement on Vietnam. According to this Agreement the country was temporarily partitioned into North Vietnam and South Vietnam by the 17th parallel. As in the Korean case there was a hope that elections would be held to speed the process towards reconciliation and reunifijication. The northern part of Vietnam (the Democratic Republic of Vietnam with its capital in Hanoi) was placed under the control of the Vietnam Workers’ Party. The southern part (the Republic of Vietnam), which was controlled by a pro-French administration and later, a pro-American administration, had its capital in Saigon. As the French departed, so the United States was forced increasingly into taking up the burden of defending the South and trying to defeat the increasingly active northern Vietnamese forces and guerrillas. As the US forces found it difffijicult to defeat an elusive enemy well-equipped for jungle fijighting, US public opinion at home turned strongly anti-war and the South Vietnamese leaders seemed increasingly autocratic and incompetent, the United States agreed to a Paris peace accord in 1973 which allowed for the withdrawal of US forces, which in turn only precipitated the end for the South Vietnamese government which was fijinally defeated with the occupation of Saigon (to be renamed Ho Chi Minh City) by the communist forces in April 1975 (Duiker 1996). The socialist North found it difffijicult to integrate socially and economically with the more ‘capitalist’ South and in 1986, recognizing the inevitable, Vietnam embarked on its own version of economic reform and openness: doi moi (renovation). Drawing inspiration from the Chinese reforms begun earlier in 1978, the Vietnamese model was nonetheless a more nationalistic variant, adapted to the specifijic conditions of Vietnam and its leaders’ aspirations. Though certainly not completely trouble-free, Vietnam has maintained its strong one-party state political system while becoming increasingly integrated into the regional and global economy and has become one of the fastest-growing states in South-east Asia in the twenty-fijirst century.

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Although a proud nation, with a culture and civilization dating back thousands of years, China by the nineteenth century had become fractured and weak, while its resources tempted Western imperialists with their expanding ambitions in Asia. Beginning with the Opium War of 1840, large areas of China were seized by Western powers. While some Chinese intellectuals hoped to reform and modernize, not enough was done, leading to more revolutionary activity with the 1911 overthrow of the Manchu Qing dynasty. Thereafter, two streams of thought emerged: a moderate nationalist movement associated with the Kuomintang (KMT) and a more radical revolutionary movement led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Japanese invasion in the 1930s threw an additional and powerful force into the equation, but with Japan’s surrender in 1945, the civil war between the CCP and the KMT became more intense and ultimately decisive. In October 1949, the People’s Republic of China was proclaimed in Beijing as the KMT remnants fled to the island of Taiwan, re-establishing the Republic of China (ROC) there with Taipei as its ‘provisional’ capital. From the 1950s, each side claimed that it was the legitimate ruler of the whole of China (though Taiwan/ROC dropped this practice in 1992). From the Korean War until 1979, the United States was a formal ally of Taiwan, supplying aid, arms and advisers, while China/PRC was initially allied with the Soviet Union until relations became more fractious from the mid1950s. However, even after the split from the Soviet Union, China was clearly on the opposite side of the ideological divide to Taiwan. As such the China-Taiwan divide, like the other examples in this chapter and that of the two Koreas, had strong political and ideological underpinnings within a Cold War framework. Both China and Taiwan have remained faithful to the concept of ‘one China’, although each side interprets that term slightly diffferently. Diplomatically, both have argued that third countries can only recognize one of them. Until the early 1970s, Taiwan did well in this game, but since then it has steadily lost almost all of its his allies, until (as of July 2011) only twenty-three countries still recognize Taiwan with the rest of the world recognizing China. The Chinese side has been consistent in regarding Taiwan simply as a ‘renegade’ province and trying to either bully or coax it back into the fold while simultaneously doing its best to restrict Taiwan’s external linkages, at least political ones, and generally reduce its socalled ‘international space’. The attitude of the Taiwanese side – and its

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characterizations of the relationship – have varied with presidents, particularly when the Democratic Progressive Party was in power 2000–2008. For the CCP, ‘the return of Taiwan would be the fijinal glorious act in the restoration of a China humiliatingly carved up by aggressive foreign powers’ and, as such, no Chinese leader can affford to be seen as being too weak on the Taiwan issue: ‘a test of political virility’ (McGregor 2011: 127–8). However, in Taiwan, a vibrant and at times volatile democracy since the mid-1980s, few people feel close to China, yet neither do many want ‘independence’ either; public opinion polls invariably show a majority in favour of the status quo. Regarding relations between the two, the term generally preferred by both governments is ‘cross-straits relations’. The two governments do not directly interact, but any talks, only since the early 1990s and then fairly intermittently, have been conducted by their respective semigovernmental organizations, the Association for Relations across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) on the Chinese side and the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) on the Taiwan side. After severe cross-straits tensions at diffferent times in the 1990s and 2000s, the election victory and return to power of the KMT, under President Ma Ying-jeou, in 2008 did herald an improved situation in cross-straits relations; increased commercial and political contacts, direct transport links approved, and a ‘diplomatic truce’ whereby China does not overtly try to seduce Taiwan’s few remaining friends. These developments helped to Ma to secure re-election as president in January 2012. Although reunifijication may seemingly have been put on a back-burner for a while, that does not mean it is offf the agenda. 9.5. The Sporting Dimensions 9.5.1. Germany Berlin had of course hosted the 1936 Olympics, which were notable for their politicization in enforcing a particular perspective of Nazi ideology and German man/womanhood as well as introducing certain features such as the torch relay which have now become well-accepted Olympic ‘rituals’, but Germany’s war record ensured that Germany, in the throes of division, was not invited to the 1948 London Olympics (IOC 1995: 44–6). However, a day after the formal establishment of the FRG (West Germany) in September 1949, a NOC was set up in Bonn, claiming to represent the whole of Germany. The East German NOC was not set up until April 1951, delayed by the Soviet Union’s initial reluctance to join the IOC which

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handicapped its East European allies. A month later, however, at a lively meeting in Vienna the IOC recognized only the West German NOC and asked the East Germans to send their athletes to the 1952 Olympics under the jurisdiction of the West German NOC. The East German NOC initially seemed willing to comply, but its government refused and no East Germans participated in the winter and summer Games of 1952 (Lammer 2003: 101– 103; IOC 1995: 51–2; Hill 1996: 37–9). As a bizarre footnote in history, under pressure from the French, the IOC had recognized as a separate entity a Saarland NOC in 1950 and its (German) athletes did compete in Helsinki; this NOC was disbanded in 1957 after the Saar was re-incorporated into West Germany. However, a crucial arrangement, known as the Berlin Agreement, was reached between the East and West German sports organizations in December 1952 (Strenk 1978: 353). It specifijied that all-German championships should be carried out in many sports, that West Germany would support East German sports federations’ effforts to become members of appropriate international federations, and East Germans would forego open political propaganda at sports events. Consequently, in the words of Manfred Lammer, there developed ‘all-German sporting relations of considerable size, even at club level’ (Lammer 2003: 104). West and East Germany entered FIFA in 1950 and 1952 respectively as separate associations/countries, but the Olympic level remained tricky, however. In successive years from 1953 to 1955 the East German NOC applied to the IOC for recognition. This was granted on a provisional basis in June 1955, but with the proviso, which the East Germans accepted reluctantly, that a joint German team be created for the two 1956 Olympic Games. Complicated inter-German negotiations followed on the selection criteria, the flag (Olympic rings on a black, red and gold background) and anthem (Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ was ultimately accepted). In the 1956 winter and summer Olympics teams, West German athletes numerically dominated their East German counterparts, although this was to be more equal in later Olympics. Moreover, for Melbourne, the two sides’ athletes travelled and were even housed separately; in Rome 1960 they lived and trained together within the same areas of the Olympic village. Thus, as was later observed, during the 1956–64 period ‘despite the appearances, the team was never an integrated whole but rather two sections’ (Strenk 1978: 351). Nonetheless, IOC President Brundage saw the formation of an all-German team as ‘an important victory for sport over politics’ and in 1956 congratulated the West German IOC member, saying: ‘We have obtained in the fijield of sport what politicians have failed to achieve so far’

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(IOC 1995: 95). Later, in 1963, he wrote to the President of the South Korean NOC about the prospects of a united Korean team citing the German example of joint teams over several Olympics: ‘On these teams the athletes themselves have been on quite friendly terms. It is only the politicians and not the sport people who make trouble’ (OSC 1963b). However, neither side was really happy. Events in Hungary and elsewhere in Eastern Europe did nothing for general East-West relations, while (West) German Chancellor Konrad Adeneur made it clear to his own sports offfijicials that the reality of the division of Germany should not be ‘veiled over’ by apparently friendly sports relations. On the East German side, with expectations of being able to exploit sports links for ideological influence in its western counterpart dimmed, the mood was moving towards pushing for normal recognition as an equal to West Germany (IOC 1995: 96–7). Walter Ulbricht, East Germany’s fijirst leader, had ‘a fanatical interest in sport’ and he ‘saw sport as one of the main means of establishing the GDR as a recognized nation-state, and also of giving it a place in world politics’ (Hardman and Naul 2002: 69). Consequently, sport was to become just as much a ‘testing ground for the viability of either socialism or capitalism’ as other spheres of East-West German rivalry (Riordan 1993: 42). Although an all-German team participated in the two 1960 Games (unofffijicially placed third in the results ranking at Rome), the erection of the Berlin Wall and the sealing offf of the German borders brought new tensions and only through mediation by the IOC was the unifijied team system retained for the 1964 Games. In the words of David Maraniss, the historian of the Rome Olympics, the unifijied team ‘was a merger of athletic necessity, not political choice, forced upon them’ by the IOC; the unity was only superfijicial and by the 1964 Tokyo Olympics had become a facade (Maraniss 2008: 43, 389). International sporting federations were getting restive and led by the IAAF were arguing for recognizing separate teams (Hill 1996: 41–2). Finally, at the October 1965 IOC session, East Germany’s NOC received full recognition (despite West Germany’s determined political lobbying against), but with a proviso that at the 1968 winter and summer Olympics the two Germanies would march under the same banner and anthem yet compete as separate teams (IOC 1995: 97–9; Lammer 2003: 106–107). Therefore, ironically, not until the 1972 Munich Games, hosted by West Germany, could East German athletes march into a stadium under their own national flag. The 1965 IOC session result, indeed, seems to have been a stimulus to the West Germans to go ahead with a bid to host the Olympics, which was successful in 1967, thereby assuring the fijirst award of an Olympics to a divided nation.

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From 1976 to 1988 two German teams participated in the Olympics, with the East Germans, due in large part to their sophisticated and centralized talent-spotting organization, strict training, and use of illegal substances, performing well above what might normally be expected from such a relatively small country, with, for example, at the Montreal Olympics gaining six more gold medals than the United States (Strenk 1978: 359. See also Riordan 1993: 39–42 and Hardman and Naul 2002: 68–9). Every year around fijifty to seventy sports meetings between East and West Germany took place, but ‘these were tediously negotiated because the GDR were intent on keeping them to a minimum’ (Lammer 2003: 108). Finally, in November 1990, six weeks after the political reunifijication of the nation, the two NOCs were merged and at the 1992 winter and summer Games once again an all-German team competed. In his analysis of this chequered history, Manfred Lammer draws three important conclusions: the creation of the all-German teams 1956–64 owed more to IOC initiative than to the two countries, although ‘without the political support of both sides’ it would have been impossible; it was not a case of ‘ping-pong diplomacy’ because ‘political and economic relationships between both German states were [already] intensive’; and, at the least, the all-German teams provided ‘a glimmer of hope’ for a shared identity and eventual reunifijication (Lammer 2003: 109–10). Udo Merkel, however, is more dismissive: ‘whilst since the early 1970s a number of small steps were taken to normalize the relationship between the two German states, sport exchanges were not part of this agenda’ (Merkel 2008: 301). Christopher Hill argues that the IOC was forced to give up its insistence on joint teams because of internal pressures from the various sporting federations and external changes coming through the increasingly wellestablished and separate identities of the two Germanies (consolidated in their 1972 Treaty) to which sport certainly contributed in the East German case (Hill 1996: 42–3). In that sense, the evident prowess and success of East German athletes, even if some of their records were achieved under dubious circumstances, worked strongly in favour of heightening East Germany’s prestige on the international stage and, paradoxically, driving it further away from West Germany rather than encouraging cooperation and integration. 9.5.2. Yemen Despite the geographical contiguity of two Yemens, there were notable diffferences in religious, cultural and socio-cultural terms in addition to

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the diffferences in ideologies. The transition team for the unifying Yemen worked hard to create parity in the new political system, but at the same time it strove to create a new national and cultural community. In this context, football, as the most popular and widely-played sport in Yemen, in particular was to come to play a crucial role in two respects: the creation of a new national championship and the selection of the national football team. Both these ‘were staged to convey appropriate political symbols with the intent of promoting identifijication with, and nationalist sentiments toward the new state’ (Stevenson and Alaug 2000a: 457). Western sports had been introduced in the south in the 1880s and in the north in the 1930s, but neither Yemen really began to promote sports until the 1970s. But sport, especially football, did gradually become a means of integrating disparate rural parts of the two countries as well as symbolizing the modernization of their economies and societies (Stevenson and Alaug 2000a: 460–2). However, in 1969 the fijirst ever inter-Yemeni football match was played, starting an annual tradition, which was consolidated in 1980 into the Yemen Cup, an elongated annual tournament that began in Sanaa and ended in Aden (Stevenson and Alaug 2000b: 200–201). Prior to unifijication, the two Yemens competed separately in the Olympics, although the current Yemen Olympic Committee’s website does claim that a Yemen Olympic Committee was formed in 1974 in the two parts of Yemen under the name ‘Sport Committee’, before formal recognition by the IOC of separate NOCs for each Yemen in 1981. North Yemen took part in the 1984 and 1988 Summer Games, while South Yemen competed at the 1988 Summer Games only. Even after unifijication, Yemen has never won an Olympic medal. On unifijication, the relevant ministries, Olympic Committees and sporting federations were merged. Then complicated steps were taken to unify the football championships by providing a season-long series of games which would lead to the creation of new leagues. Similarly, equity became a watchword of selecting the national team for its fijirst competition, the 1990 Asian Games in Beijing for although some joint training had begun even prior to reunifijication, from 1988, there had been no participation in international matches as a joint team (Stevenson and Alaug 2000b: 201). The new squad reflected balance in the numbers of players from each side in the squad, the coaching stafff’s roles, and the revolving team captaincy. The team’s fijirst home appearance, in a 1991 Olympic play-offf game against Pakistan, was marked by strong set of symbols: new flag, new national anthem, and new team colours (Stevenson and Alaug 2000a: 463–7). Sport, therefore, was mobilized as a way of helping to consolidate national unity

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after unifijication, but it played no signifijicant role in the processes leading up to that unifijication and did nothing to ameliorate the internal sociopolitical tensions which developed subsequent to unifijication. 9.5.3. Vietnam Maybe as a result of a long history fijilled with wars, a martial tradition was manifested in sporting events amongst Vietnamese people from ancient times. Wrestling, canoeing, swimming, horse-racing and archery contests evolved amongst the mountain and coastal tribes. Although, under French colonial domination, there were limited sporting opportunities, Vietnamese athletes did begin to attend international competitions in the region. Although the wars against France and then the United States proved destructive, some opportunities were taken to construct the preliminary infrastructure for sports, such as stadiums and training centres. Vietnamese athletes fijirst participated in the Olympics in 1952 (and from 1956 as South Vietnam), but through to 1972 they failed to win even a single medal. South Vietnam became a founding member of the South-East Asian Peninsular Games Federation in 1959 but did not host the event at any stage before reunifijication (even afterwards it was not until 2003 that Vietnam hosted the South-East Asian Games). Football, which was and remains very popular, continued to be played during the Vietnam War, but the North Vietnamese team was not very active, playing almost exclusively other Communist countries between 1956 and 1966, while the South Vietnamese team took part in the fijirst two Asian Cup fijinals, fijinishing fourth both times. There were never any direct contests between athletes or teams from the two Vietnams and, given the prolonged fijighting that was going on for almost three decades, it is not surprising that there were not any inter-Vietnamese discussions about sporting cooperation. While both governments may have had some inclination to project international sporting success as showcasing their governments, the exigencies of war fijighting and the poor facilities both north and south mitigated against any signifijicant sporting endeavours. It is fair to say that sport did not fijigure as a factor in bringing about the fijinal reunifijication of the two Vietnams, although sport undoubtedly was used as one perceived means to help increase unity and assist in creating socio-economic stability after 1975. As such, similar to the Yemen case, it has been a factor after reunifijication but not before. The reunifijied Vietnam was unable or unwilling to compete at the 1976 and 1984 Olympics, but has since then joined every Olympics, winning its

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fijirst ever Olympic medal (a silver in the women’s taekwondo) at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Since 1975, the Vietnamese sports and physical culture have been promoted to become a widespread movement among people through the slogan ‘to be strong to construct and defend the country’. In the view of one senior sports offfijicial, mass sport has ‘positively afffected the socio-economic development in Vietnam as well as limited social evils and contributed in building a better life-style in localities throughout the country’ (Thanh 2010). As such sport in Vietnam does seem to contribute to the ‘socialist’ ideals of the party leadership. 9.5.4. China-Taiwan China had actually joined the Olympic movement in 1922, when its AllChina Athletic Association was set up, and the fijirst (and lone) athlete was sent to the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, in part to try to thwart Japanese effforts to have its newly-created occupied state Manchukuo recognized (Xu 2008: 40–5; Close et al. 2007: 150, 191n). Despite the Japanese invasion and the later civil war within China, Chinese athletes attended the 1936 and the 1948 Olympics. After 1949, the new Chinese leadership had other priorities, but with strong Soviet mentorship the mainland Chinese were able to obtain an invitation to the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki, even though because of visa difffijiculties their delegation barely arrived in time to attend the closing ceremony and only one swimmer even had a chance to compete in preliminary rounds (Xu 2008: 78–84; Close et al. 2007: 151–2; Hill 1996: 44–5). But the IOC had also invited Taiwan to attend the Helsinki Games under a ‘makeshift formula whereby each national committee was permitted to send athletes to Helsinki only in those sports for which the country’s national sport federation was recognized by the international sporting federation’. Though no-one from Taiwan attended in protest at the ‘unlawful’ invitation to China, the issue of membership of the IOC had already begun to become complicated and contentious (Cha 2009: 98–9). China may have won the Helsinki battle, but it lost the 1956 Melbourne Olympics contest; arriving later than the Taiwanese to check in at the Olympic village, the Chinese decided to withdraw in protest (Xu 2008: 85). After unsuccessful effforts to pressurize the IOC President Brundage, who clearly was sympathetic to the Taiwanese and had a reputation for being ‘a staunch anti-Communist’, in 1958 China efffectively withdrew from the Olympic movement and only attended non-IOC international sporting events such as the GANEFO games (Cha 2009: 99–100; IOC 1995: 100; Maraniss 2008: 57). Although Taiwan was left as the sole ‘Chinese’ member

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of the IOC, its nomenclature came under scrutiny as it clearly could not supervise sports on the mainland. A year before the 1960 Rome Olympics, the IOC voted to force Taiwan to use the name ‘Taiwan’ (or even ‘Formosa’) not ‘Republic of China’. The Taiwanese authorities had evidently decided to participate, whatever the nomenclature, but under suffferance, resulting in its athletes famously marching into the opening ceremony under the name of Formosa but behind a banner reading ‘Under Protest’. The Taiwanese were rewarded for their temerity by a scolding from the normally-sympathetic IOC President Brundage, but at least they went home with their fijirst ever Olympic medal, a silver, won by a decathlete (Maraniss 2008: 56–60, 96–7, 300–305; IOC 1995: 103). Only from the 1968 Mexico Olympics was the country’s offfijicial name allowed to be used (Xu 2008: 90–5). The IOC’s offfijicial website dates the recognition of Chinese Taipei’s NOC as 1960. The President of the Italian NOC, Giulio Onesti, somewhat disingenuously claimed of the IOC’s decision to ask Taiwan to adopt a new name: ‘This is not a political decision, but a sports decision adopted by a sports consent, approved by a democratic majority’. (Bulletin du Comite International Olympique, No.68, 1959: 37). Throughout the 1960s, the internal political convulsions inside China as well as its increasing alienation from its Soviet and East European supporters benefijited Taiwan. But, by the early 1970s, the tide was beginning to flow in China’s favour, in part through the unexpected use of ‘ping-pong diplomacy’ between US and Chinese table-tennis players which provided an excuse to move towards a rapprochement in Sino-American relations that in turn encouraged other countries to follow suit (Cha 2009: 75–83). China’s diplomatic successes, including gaining the ‘China’ seat in the United Nations, again put the IOC membership question back on the agenda. Brundage’s successor as IOC President, Lord Killanin, was keen to bring China into the movement somehow; ‘my most cherished desire throughout my Olympic years’, according to his autobiography (Killanin 1983: 117). However, a major row broke out in 1976 in the run-up to the Montreal Olympics over the Canadian government’s refusal to admit Taiwanese athletes under the name of ‘Republic of China’; mainland China in turn rejected any formula which seemed to imply a two-China policy. A last-minute concession offfered by the Canadians to use the so-called ‘Rome formula’ was rejected by Taiwan, which withdrew from the Games (Cha 209: 100–101; Hill 1996: 48–50; Killanin 1983: 132–4; Xu 2008: 164–96). One mainland Chinese scholar has argued that domestic problems over succession in 1976 actually meant that China had little time for international matters and that it ‘was in no position to organize a team to

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compete in the Montreal Olympic Games even if the problem of “two Chinas” had been solved successfully’ (Pei 2006: 450). The Montreal events, however, acted as the catalyst for a prolonged and confrontational series of IOC meetings which culminated in an IOC decision in October 1979 to admit China but allow Taiwan to remain as a member, under the name of Chinese Taipei and with a new Olympic flag (Cha 2009: 101–102; Xu 2008: 96–114; Hill 1996: 50–3). Since then, although Taiwan was unhappy about the conditions imposed on it, both countries’ athletes have continued to participate in Olympic and Asian Games as well as other international sporting events. In fact, the so-called ‘Olympic formula’ of using Chinese Taipei as the external representative designation for Taiwan has been utilized in other ways to assist Taiwanese participation in the international community, most notably in the inter-governmental Asia Pacifijic Economic Cooperation organization which was established in 1989 and which both China and Taiwan joined in 1991. However, Taiwan remains convinced that it is not always being treated equally with China even in international sporting competitions. The 2008 Beijing Olympics were set to become one such bone of contention. In fact, the Taiwanese NOC representative had voted in favour of Beijing’s bid at the votes for both the 2000 and the 2008 Games (Kyodo News, 26 June 2000), but it was the route of the Olympic flame which become an issue. Despite behind-the-scenes informal negotiations between Chinese and Taiwanese offfijicials, when the planned torch relay route was announced in April 2007 the Taiwanese were unhappy with fijinding Taipei listed after Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and before Hong Kong in the planned route. This was taken as implying that Taiwan was a part of China’s domestic route (Taipei Times, 29 April 2007). The IOC intervened to urge further discussions between the two sides, but talks broke down again in September 2007 after the mainland asked Taiwan not to show its flag or play its national anthem while the torch was in Taiwan (South China Morning Post, 22 September 2007; Cha 2009: 102–103). So, fijinally, the Olympic torch did not go to Taiwan. While the flame plan for Taiwan was deemed unsatisfactory by the Taiwanese leaders, the Chinese government could at least take heart from the fact that then Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian’s aspirations for a more ‘independent’ existence for Taiwan, which had naturally upset the mainland leaders and even the United States, did not result in an attempt by him to exploit China’s fear of losing the Olympics by attempting some more provocative action before he left offfijice in May 2008, in the belief that

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China would not dare react militarily. The parallel with 1987, when the South Korean leadership baulked at risking losing the Olympics, was not put to the test in the China-Taiwan case. However, the sporting competition between China and Taiwan remains contentious. In November 2011, after three unsuccessful bids for earlier games, Taipei did win the right to host the 2017 Universiade student games (Taipei Times, 26 March 2012), although there were suspicions that China, normally reluctant to allow any kind of ‘diplomatic’ triumph for Taiwan, in the end did not lobby hard against the bid since it wished to allow incumbent president Ma Yingjeou, who had generally taken a softer line towards China than his predecessor, to claim some success and so boost his re-election chances in the January 2012 presidential election. The next test case is going to be more serious: Taipei’s bid to host either the 2019 or the 2023 Asian Games. When the OCA meets in late 2012 will China be willing to allow this amount of ‘international space’ to Taiwan? 9.6. Lessons to be Learnt? IOC President Lord Killanin, who was actually a supporter of bringing PRC China into the Olympic movement, was to later complain that ‘through my time in the IOC, the Chinese problem had dogged the Olympic movement’ (cited in Xu 2008: 102). In fact, as Christopher Hill has noted, the issues surrounding the two Chinas and the two Germanies (and he could equally as well have included the two Koreas) were ‘prime examples of the inability of the Olympic movement and sport in general to avoid involvement in great questions of international politics’ (Hill 1996: 56). Two broad conclusions can be drawn from this analysis. First, certainly politically-divided nations, imbued with understandable desires to promote the status, legitimacy and identity of each particular ‘part-country’, have been especially sensitive to issues of equality, recognition, and image within the global sporting communities. Consequently, the offfijicials of international and regional sporting bodies have often been forced into temporary but ultimately unsatisfactory compromises. It has to be admitted that some of these compromises proved remarkably long-lasting, even though neither party was really satisfijied with the status quo. The two Germanies did cooperate at the Olympics from 1956 to 1964, but essentially operated as separate entities in global sport both before and after, until reunifijication in 1990. The sporting representation dispute between China and Taiwan, dating from 1949 was supposed to be ‘settled’ in 1979

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but in reality, as was seen in the flame relay controversy in 2008, it retains the potential to break through to the surface again. Global sport, of course, does include a number of anomalies where nations do not correspond to state boundaries resulting in divided representation in international federations and competitions. One of the most well-known is the insistence of the four constituent parts of the United Kingdom, namely, England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland on separate membership of FIFA and all international football competitions. Although a United Kingdom team, under the title of Great Britain, has participated in some Olympic football competitions – and will do so again at the London Olympics – it is clear that the ‘national’ football associations resent having to be drawn into anything which could conceivably diminish their separate sporting status. Rugby union provides a diffferent formulation, with a combined Ireland side (since 1879) drawn from both southern Ireland (Eire) and Northern Ireland, as well as individual teams from England, Wales and Scotland. This combined Ireland side has not been without controversy where issues of national anthems and flags are concerned; yet, even through all the political troubles over the past four decades in and around Ulster a combined team has been fijielded, but seemingly without any impact beyond immediate match days.1 The four constituent parts of the United Kingdom also participate separately in the Commonwealth Games, but not in other major athletic competitions. So, in these cases we see some element of compromise: some sports such as football and rugby claim a separateness while most sports are taken as ‘British’ representation. There is not displayed the ‘all or nothing’ mentality that characterizes the interactions between constituent parts of the divided nations/states discussed earlier in this chapter. Second, sporting contacts have had at best limited leverage or at worst have been almost totally irrelevant in promoting political reconciliation between the two halves of a divided country. Even in the German case the forced combined Olympic teams seemed to have provided little traction for any political rapprochement. This is not to deny that sport has often played some role after political reunifijication in fostering unity and a new sense of national identity in those newly-unifijied states, but the case for a role before reunifijication is by no means proven.

1 Mike Cronin, in his defijinitive study of Irish sport and nationalism, argues that rugby through its parochial, middle class and Anglo-centric background ‘does not make a huge impact on any understanding of Irish nationalism or national identity’ (1999: 22).

CHAPTER TEN

CONCLUSION For both Koreas, sports policy, especially since the 1960s, has been driven by a complex and dynamic interaction between politics, economics and culture in the attempt to produce efffective sporting systems and to secure international sporting achievements and recognition. Both in the South and in the North, governments have seen sport as a utilitarian tool, a means to mobilize their peoples for domestic ‘national’ goals such as social stability, health welfare, political unity and economic development. But, for both states, international sporting successes – and the cultivation of high-performance sporting systems to achieve such successes – have also had important ramifijications in terms of image-branding, national pride and inter-Korean rivalry and/or cooperation. In comparing the sports policies of the two Koreas and their linkages with nationalism and domestic politics a number of propositions can be made. First, in the context of the discourse over nationalism and its interconnections with sport outlined in Chapter 2, state-inspired and statesupported sportive nationalism has been important in the South from the days of President Park and arguably continues today as seen by the state’s heavy involvement in the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics bid. Yet, at the same time, over the past two decades or so popular sportive nationalism has become much more pronounced, perhaps displayed most visibly during the 2002 World Cup when huge numbers of Koreans flocked on to the streets to support the South Korean football team’s march to the semifijinals but repeated again, albeit in a slightly lower key, for more recent sporting events or successes. In the North, because of the nature of the society there and the high degree of control exhibited by the state organs, it is tempting to see sportive nationalism as almost exclusively stateinspired, but potentially at least there could be a latent element of popular sportive nationalism, since disappointed North Korean football fans actually rioted after the national team lost 0–2 to Iran in a World Cup qualifijier in March 2005 (Chosun Ilbo, 31 March 2005). Second, both Koreas have devoted considerable fijinancial and human resources to creating and expanding sporting systems that nurture and develop sporting heroes and heroines and, in the process, bring reflected glory on leaders, governments, and their respective socio-political

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systems. As John Hoberman has noted in the context of other communist sporting systems, ‘Marxist-Leninist scientism put special emphasis on the power of science and technology to bring about social change and the transformation of man’ (Hoberman 1993: 27). Kim Il Sung’s juche philosophy similarly highlights the determining power of man to emancipate himself, whether through technological or other means – and sport can be a part of that process. It may certainly be problematic to assert, as Kim himself did, that juche has been solely responsible for North Korean sporting successes, but there is little doubt that the sporting system which has been developed, while clearly not on the scale or intensity or with the resource base of the Soviet, Chinese or East German models, nonetheless aims at creating sporting success through a ‘scientifijic’ approach to athletic performance. In the South, the government has been active since the days of President Park in devoting resources to the development of elite sport and to the hosting of sporting mega-events, though more intermittent and inconsistent in spreading sports to the general Korean public. Admittedly, social constraints – strong beliefs in studying hard and then later in life in working hard – have acted as a dampener on active public participation at the non-elite level. However, name recognition of sporting stars is high inside South Korea and certainly can act as an inspiration to aspiring athletes. Linked to that is the fact that the South’s sporting system is also marked by a strong flavour of commercialization, with major chaebol and even not so major companies active in sponsoring teams, leagues and individuals. While the costs have become an increasingly important factor in bids by any city around the world to host sporting mega-events, there is generally an acceptance amongst the South Korean public of the need to take up those burdens in return for the prestige of hosting sporting mega-events. One of the evident strong points in Pyeongchang’s successful bid campaign to host the 2018 Winter Olympics was extremely strong public support; polls showed 93% of Gangwon province residents and 91% of people nationwide supported the bid (Korea Herald, 7 July 2011). The willingness of political leaders to use sport to further their own political ambitions and to bask in the reflected glory of sporting success – acting as kinds of ‘sporting populists’ – has been common in most countries around the world and the two Koreas should not be seen as exceptions. US President Ronald Reagan, who had actually been a high school and college (American) footballer, is one of the best known examples of a politician who not only liberally sprinkled his speeches with sporting idioms and anecdotes, but also utilized events such as US athletic successes

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in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics to sustain his re-election campaign (Monnington 1993). South Korean presidents and political leaders have been less adept at parlaying their own (modest) sporting records and, arguably, anyway sport is more compartmentalized in Korean value systems than in, say, the United States. Although Park Chung-hee had physically (and mentally) strengthened himself as a youth through martial arts and Kim Young-sam was famous for his early morning jogging runs, South Korean presidents and politicians have normally confijined themselves to photo-calls with successful athletes and claiming credit for successful sporting policy outcomes rather then relying on their own individual sporting credentials. Military presidents such as Park and Chun utilized sports as a means at the very least of shoring up their legitimacy but also to some extent for diverting popular attention away from the defijiciencies of their rule. The two Kims and Roh, more sure of their popular mandates, ironically seemed to fijind less need to highlight sporting policies apart from the obvious exception of a marked willingness to follow their more undemocratic predecessors in bidding for high profijile sporting mega-events. In the North, of course, sporting successes have been regularly attributed to the guidance of the two Kims (and maybe in future the third Kim), including for example the coach of the men’s football squad in the 2010 World Cup who admitted to receiving ‘regular tactical advice’ from Kim Jong Il during matches ‘using mobile phones that are not visible to the naked eye’ (Chosun Ilbo, 28 July 2010). The three Kims’ own sporting abilities during their youth or later, however, have always been shrouded in mystery. Kim Il Sung’s own offfijicial autobiography tells many stories of his peripatetic school life, but sport does not feature apart from a occasional passing reference to athletic events (but with no mention of his own active participation) (Kim 1994). Kim Jong Il’s sporting achievements were also obscure apart from his legendary exploits on the golf course, where, according to the golf professional at then newly-opened Pyongyang Golf Club in 1994, Kim ‘shot a 34 over 18 holes, including fijive holes-in-one, and did no worse than a birdie on any hole’ (International Herald Tribune, 19 October 1994). Even less is known about the sporting activities of the new successor, Kim Jong Il’s third son Kim Jong Un, but he is said to be ‘a huge fan of basketball’ and a skilful and determined player when at school in Switzerland (Washington Post, 16 July 2009; Korea Times, 2 October 2011). Third, evident South Korean sporting success internationally in recent decades, whether measured by medals at the Olympics, appearances in

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the football World Cup fijinals, or the ability to win the hosting of sporting mega-events, relative to the North’s record has undoubtedly coloured how the two sides approach inter-Korean sporting negotiations. Consequently, in the much-repeated but frequently-unsuccessful talks about joint teams, the South’s confijidence in its sporting record and continuing sporting prowess – and its reluctance to disadvantage its athletes from realistic medal or victory opportunities through having to participate in a combined team on equal terms with the North – has come up against the North’s pride and concern that it is not being treated equally. The North has consistently argued that a ‘sincerely’ unifijied team should be chosen on the basis of equality in numbers of athletes or players as well as of coaches and offfijicials. Whereas the South was reluctantly willing to accept that logic in 1991, subsequently, as South Korean athletes increased their global athletic presence, it began to argue that the key issue was to create the strongest possible team in order to ensure victories even if that meant unbalanced contributions from both sides. The implication was that South Korean athletes would probably make up the bulk of any such joint team, hardly an attitude likely to appeal to the North. But it is not just the selection of athletes that has been problematic, for, as Udo Merkel has argued, difffering training methods, lines of communication and fijinancial resources add to the complications (Merkel 2008: 299). These diffferences of approach have certainly handicapped effforts to create joint teams. Does sport help us to have a better understanding of the dynamics of inter-Korean relations on the peninsula and has it (or can it) play any signifijicant catalytic role in the process of not just improving bilateral relations but also moving towards eventual reunifijication? Commenting on the pending North Korean participation in the 1966 Football World Cup in England and the anticipated diplomatic and political repercussions, a senior British Foreign Offfijice offfijicial wrote sardonically in early 1966: ‘My own view is that these international athletic meetings, far from improving international relations, are always a source of friction. I gather however that I am in a minority in this opinion’ (NA 1966a). For some observers and participants, as discussed in Chapter 2, sporting contacts are a way to overcome or at least ameliorate political difffijiculties and diffferences and as such can contribute to improving international relations. As such, this viewpoint accords with the basic ideas espoused by the so-called ‘liberal’ school of international relations theorists; in so far as such contacts could promote value changes, constructivists could also support this approach. Certainly, many Koreans have advocated sporting contacts as a method of improving inter-Korean relations. In what might

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be described as a ‘functionalist’ approach, South Korean offfijicials, both inside the NOC and in government, have frequently seen sports exchanges and cooperation as a kind of bridging policy to reconciliation and eventual reunifijication (Park 2007: 95). This approach was particularly in tune with the engagement policies advocated by both the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations from 1998 to 2008. Park Sung-il, a South Korean NOC offfijicial at that time, argued: ‘We are all brothers, one mind, one soul. And we are confijident that through sports we can bring the two Koreas together’ (South China Morning Post, 1 November 2005). Chung Eun-soon, the South Korean athlete who helped to carry the united Korea flag at the opening ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, has commented that ‘Through sports, people could feel that we’re still one people’ (Ramstad and Park, 2008). Academic Yang Dong-ja has argued that: ‘sport-based initiatives between North and South Korea have served as one of the most signifijicant pillars for the movement toward peaceful unifijication of the world’s only divided country’ (Yang 2003: 77). A China Daily editorial writer had also argued that a joint Korean team for the Beijing Olympics had been ‘expected to help achieve new breakthroughs in inter-Korean relations. The signifijicance of such a partnership will go far beyond sports’ (China Daily, 27 February 2004). Even the current South Korean President, Lee Myung-bak, talking with South Korean sports offfijicials after his failure to achieve a substantial dialogue with North Korean ‘number two’ Kim Yong Nam in Beijing in August 2008, stated that ‘sport can help to bring about practical improvement in relations between the two Koreas’ (Korea Times, 10 August 2008). The leader of the main opposition party, Sohn Hak-kyu, in the aftermath of Pyeongchang winning the bid to host the 2018 Winter Olympics, asserted that those Games should become ‘a turning point in the history of the divided Korean peninsula, as well as in global peace’ (South China Morning Post, 14 July 2011). The basic argument from this perspective, therefore, is that in line with the functionalist approach to international relations, socio-cultural or ‘low politics’ exchanges, of which sport is a key example, can contribute to consolidating the development of co-existence on the Korean peninsula and, ultimately, to unifying the nation. For others, however, as also discussed in Chapter 2, it is politics that drive, distort or obstruct sporting exchanges and cooperation. In terms of inter-Korean rivalry, this meant that during the Cold War, ‘sports exchanges resembled battles, with the outcome seen as proof of regime superiority’, while simultaneously both Koreas tried ‘to isolate each other from the world of sports diplomacy’ (Park 2007: 94). Park Sang-hyun continues that,

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even in the post-Cold war era and after the 2000 Pyongyang Summit, it did ‘not mean that detente conditions led to the smooth development of inter-Korean sports cooperation…….inter-Korean sports exchanges have depended on international and inter-Korean political circumstances’ (Park 2007: 96–7). Byun Jin-Heung has argued that ‘although the basic principle requires that inter-Korean sports exchange should be freed from the shadows of political manipulations, it has not been able to pull it offf’; he thus recommends that to ‘ensure that inter-Korean sports exchanges can serve their original purpose of sportsmanship without being trapped in politics, not only depoliticization of two governments but also depoliticization of the people involved in sports are required’ (Byun 2003:133–4). Jhe Seong-Ho agrees, arguing that although sport should be able to play an important role in building trust and promoting reconciliation, ‘interKorean sports exchange has been largely dictated by political and diplomatic circumstances’; he advocates inter-Korean sporting events moving away from the ‘political arena’ and ‘towards the pure spirit of sports’ (Jhe 2003: 161, 167). From this perspective, both sides either deliberately used inter-Korean sports negotiations and exchanges for political purposes or allowed them to become manipulated by political considerations. The demonstration of state power through sport, therefore, chimes well with realist approaches to international relations. Therefore, this school of thought would assert that in the inter-Korean context for socio-cultural contacts to be efffective in inducing change at least some basic convergence in political and economic standpoints and a certain level of trust, sincerity and transparency is necessary as a prerequisite. At least twice in South Korea’s modern history, sport does seem to have played a role in either developing new relations across old barriers or in ameliorating tensions with existing partners or neighbours. In and around the 1988 Seoul Olympics, sport – or at least the desire not to miss out on sporting mega-event participation – played an important catalytic role in terms of the South’s relations with the socialist states in Eastern Europe as well as the Soviet Union and China (as discussed in Chapter 5). Later, the co-hosting of the 2002 Football World Cup fijinals with Japan, with which the South has had a tricky love-hate relationship ever since 1945, provided at least temporarily for a measure of bilateral reconciliation after a difffijicult year for bilateral relations in 2001 and considerable pre-event bickering between the two states. Not a qualitative breakthrough in the relationship but at least a smoothing over of other tensions for a while or, as Byung Chul Koh argues, at least for the following couple of years ‘the

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prevalence of cooperation, with only faint echoes of discord’ (Koh B.C. 2007: 437). Yet, despite the positive roles that sport has played in relations with third countries, the realities for the South’s relations with the North are much less satisfying. Indeed, as Scott Snyder has cogently argued, during the Cold War era the sporadic record of North-South dialogue on a whole range of issues, political, economic, and humanitarian as well as sporting, were characterized by ‘a zero-sum approach – the perpetuation of North-South legitimacy through means other than war’ (Snyder 1991: 12). Even after the end of the Cold War, the ‘breakthroughs’ or positive sum cooperation and exchanges in inter-Korean relations have been intermittent, inconsistent and not really long-lived. It follows from this that at the very least, in divided societies and countries where nationalism and political legitimacy become closely intertwined, sporting contacts and cooperative ventures are much more likely to be at the mercy of political events, calculations and under-currents. In the Korean case, therefore, the nature, pace and intensity of interKorean sports exchanges both inside and outside the Olympic movement have been dictated by political and diplomatic circumstances. Udo Merkel has argued that ‘for both Korean states sport provides a multi-layered network for contact and dialogue which has frequently been used to send diplomatic signals and test (foreign) policies’ (Merkel 2008: 307). It should be emphasized, however, that these signals can be both positive and negative. Inter-Korean negotiations over joint teams or sporting competitions have shown diffferences in approach, with the South trying to build on past steps forward, while the North has been more cautious in taking each one as a separate negotiation, but for both the desire to score political points has remained crucial. Consequently, in the context of the inter-Korean relationship, this tendency has too often managed to trump the ideal of sport bringing peoples and their governments closer together. Events since 2008 seem only to confijirm that conclusion. The inter-Korean discussions over sporting cooperation have basically fallen into three categories, as identifijied by Jhe Seong-ho: (i) the two Koreas form a pan-Korean team for an international sporting event; (ii) a sports event is held between the two Koreas in one or the other country; and (iii) athletes and offfijicials from the two Koreas march together at an international sporting event ceremony (Jhe 2003: 161–2). The earlier chapters have demonstrated that only twice, in 1991, has the fijirst category – a joint team – been successfully achieved and that even in the

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second category of inter-Korean matches or events these have been limited and transitory, such as in 1990, 1999 and 2000. The third category, the joint Korean entry into international sporting events, had all the hallmarks of becoming a standard or even ‘routine’ procedure during the fijirst half of the 2000s, continuing even after political tensions rose with the start of the second nuclear crisis from late 2002. There ought to have been some scope for moving on to other forms of inter-Korean sporting cooperation, not just the creation of joint teams for international events but also the inclusion of more ‘amateur’ or non-offfijicial sporting exchanges, such as those encouraged at the Gangwon and Cheju provincial level. Instead, the political overtones of sporting interaction were sustained and free-flowing sporting cooperation was not achieved. In reviewing the history of inter-Korean political relations and interKorean sporting interactions over the more than six decades since the two Korean states were created one conclusion becomes clear: in almost all cases it is sporting interaction that follows from, not precedes or encourages, political dialogue. Clear examples of this tendency are the two developments which are often taken as signifying the key positive role that sports can play in inter-Korean relations. First, the joint Korean teams formed for the 1991 table-tennis and junior football championships. Discussions for such cooperation only bore fruit after the breakthrough in inter-Korean political relations exemplifijied by the beginning of prime minister-level talks in 1990. By 1992 both political talks and sports cooperation talks had foundered. There has never been a joint Korean team fijielded in a major international sporting event since that year of 1991. Second, the joint entry of the two teams into the 2000 Sydney Olympics opening ceremony, which again was only agreed after the historic North-South Summit held in Pyongyang in June 2000 amidst a plethora of initiatives to consolidate the new atmosphere in North-South relations. On other occasions, such as 1979, 1983–84, 1989 and 1992, talks were opened and then foundered either because there was no substantial political dialogue going on simultaneously or because they quickly fell into line with the collapse of other equally brief political contacts. In only three periods were sporting dialogues carried on when interKorean political relations were either tense or almost non-existent. In each case there were very specifijic objectives with political or diplomatic implications that justifijied both sides embarking on or continuing sporting dialogue and so explains the fact that they are exceptions which prove the rule. First, in 1963 North and South NOCs joined with the IOC to try to form a joint team for the Tokyo Olympics at a time when when there was

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no other means of direct North-South contact available. Talks continued for some while simply because both sides were maneuvring for specifijic objectives: the North to achieve full IOC recognition and the South to prevent the North participating in the Tokyo Olympics. Second, during 1985– 88, again with IOC intervention, the North and South NOCs continued to talk even though political dialogue had dried up after an initial burst of optimism in 1983–84. Both sides had specifijic political objectives to achieve in the sports dialogue: the North wanted at best to gain at least part of the 1988 Olympic action and at worst to cause such doubts about South Korea’s stability and sincerity as might dissuade its socialist allies from participating, while the South wanted to avoid the North doing anything to disrupt what was expected to be a great national success. Third, the practice of a joint entry of athletes into Olympic and regional games continued after 2002, through to 2006, despite the eruption of the second nuclear crisis and the cooling in North-South relations with formal direct contacts being reduced or becoming more sporadic apart from through the medium of the Six-Party Talks. Cross-border visiting for sports purposes almost completely ceased during 2004 before beginning to revive again from 2005 (see Appendix One), but the intra-NOC mechanisms for contact about joint entries remained in place. Again both sides wanted to make political statements aimed primarily at the United States: the North wanted to show George Bush that it could still maintain contacts with the South despite the nuclear crisis, while the South wanted to remind Bush that there were ways of dealing with the North other than just pressure and sanctions. Examination of the examples of other divided states suggests that similarly sport has not been a crucial element in the promoting of either reconciliation or unifijication. In the cases of Vietnam and Yemen, there was either very limited or no sporting interaction before those pairs of states became one, although sport may well have helped to consolidate postunifijication statehood and national identity. In the case of China and Taiwan, which of course have not yet unifijied, there appears to have been little direct sporting contact and the controversy over representation in the Olympic movement which raged for about three decades and was so closely tied to the struggle for global diplomatic recognition has only served to hamper rather than promote sporting interaction and diplomatic reconciliation. Even in the late 2000s, when a degree of accommodation in cross-Straits relations was being achieved, Taiwan remained suspicious that China was willing to subsume sporting issues into political ones, as exemplifijied by the controversy of the Olympic torch relay route in 2008. The two Germanies remain as an interesting test-case and one

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which was frequently raised as an example for the two Koreas to follow. Even with the IOC’s success in persuading the two Germanies to create unifijied teams for the Olympics between 1956 and 1964, the athletes and their offfijicials appeared grudging and unenthusiastic about such cooperation. In the end the strong nationalistic and sporting desires of both East and West Germany ensured that the experiment ended as they began to participate again as separate states until the later collapse of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent reunifijication. The intense but inevitable rivalry and competition that the governments and peoples of politically-divided states feel therefore acts as a barrier preventing sport from acting independently as a force for peace and reconciliation. This is not to imply that effforts to develop sporting contacts across divided states should be abandoned, but rather that undue expectations should not be laid on such effforts. Coming back to the Korean experience, then, while the diplomatic and political relationship between North and South remains ‘abnormal’, the prospects for ‘normal’ sporting exchanges remain cloudy. The North decided not to send any athletes to the IAAF World Championships, held in the South for the fijirst time in August 2011. In this context, it remains very likely that without a signifijicant warming up in political relations beforehand at the next major sporting event in which both Koreas will participate, the London Olympic Games in July 2012, once again there will not be a unifijied Korean team and not even a joining together for a joint march at the opening ceremony.

Source: Based on data from the Ministry of National Unifijication. http://eng.unikorea.go.kr

326 1,190 5 799 266 1,198 271 2,501 3,395 3,557 10,777 4,324 12,217 2,557 765 717 78 4 213 76 937 941 280 675 293 483 172 3,438 4,336 3,837 11,452 4,617 12,700 2,729

23 3 5,187 267 204 45,135 43 0 2,107 63 0 4,876 330 204 50,011

Period 1989– 19981999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 20092010.6 Total Sector 1997

Northward Sports 187 0 163 446 310      Total 701 239 330 1,150 2,916 Southward Sports 148 62 1      Total 534 0 62 404 32 Two-way Total 1,235 239 392 1,554 2,948

Direction

Unit: Persons

Number of Inter-Korean Cross-border Visitors for Cultural and Social Exchanges

APPENDIX ONE

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abe, Ikuo. (2007). ‘Historical Signifijicance of the Far Eastern Championship Games: An International Political Arena’, in Andreas Niehaus and Max Seinsch (eds.), Olympic Japan: Ideals and Realities of (Inter)Nationalism. Wurzburg: Ergon Verlag, 67–87. Ahn, Min-seok. (2002). ‘The political economy of the World Cup in South Korea’, in John Horne and Wolfram Manzenreiter (eds.), Japan, Korea and the 2002 World Cup. London: Routledge, 162–73. Allison, Lincoln. (1986). ‘Sport and politics’, in Lincoln Allison (ed.), The Politics of Sport. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1–26. Anderlini, Jamil. (2011). ‘America fears the great brawl of China’. Financial Times, 24 August. Andrews, David. (2009). ‘Sport, culture and late capitalism’, in Ben Carrington and Ian McDonald (eds.), Marxism, Cultural Studies and Sport. Abingdon: Routledge, 213–31. Appadurai, Arjun. (2000). ‘The grounds of nation-state: identity, violence and territory’, in Kjell Goldmann, Ulf Hannerz and Charles Westin (eds.), Nationalism and internationalism in the post-cold war era. London: Routledge, 129–42. Armstrong, Charles. (1997). ‘The Politics of Transition in North and South Korea’, in David R.McCann (ed.), Korea Briefijing: Toward Reunifijication. New York: M.E.Sharpe, 5–24. Armstrong, Charles. (2009). Juche and North Korea’s Global Aspirations. NKIDP Working Paper, No.1, Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center. Baehr, Peter. (2010). Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism, and the Social Sciences. Stanford; Stanford University Press. Bairner, Alan and John Sugden. (1999). ‘Sport in Divided Societies’, in John Sugden and Alan Bairner (eds.), Sport in Divided Societies. Oxford: Meyer and Meyer Sport, 1–11. Barnes, Gina. (2001). State Formation in Korea: Historical and Archaeological Perspectives. London: Curzon. BBC. (1990a and 1990b). Summary of World Broadcasts. 17 January, FE/0664/A3/1; 22 January, FE0668/A3/1. Reading: BBC Monitoring Service. BBC Monitoring Service. (2009). ‘North Korea reports Kim Jong-il watches volleyball match’, in: Asia Pacifijic-Political, 29 January [available in Lexis-Nexis database]. Beal, Tim. (2011). Crisis in Korea: America, China and the Risk of War. London: Pluto Press. Bonner, Nick. (2007). ‘The Value of Informal Diplomacy and Cultural Exchanges in the DPRK’, in: Susan Pares (ed.), Papers of the British Association for Korean Studies. Vol. 11. London: BAKS. 73–80. Breen, Michael. (1998). The Koreans: Who They Are, What They Want, Where Their Future Lies. London: Orion. Bridges, Brian. (2007). ‘Reluctant Mediator: Hong Kong, the Two Koreas and the Tokyo Olympics’, International Journal of the History of Sport, 24 (3): 375–91. Bridges, Brian. (2008a). ‘Football, Nationalism, and Fan Violence in China’, China Aktuell. 2: 60–81. Bridges, Brian. (2008b). ‘The Seoul Olympics: Economic Miracle Meets the World’, International Journal of the History of Sport, 25 (14): 1939–52. Bridges, Brian. (2009). ‘Playing the Game? Sport and the two Koreas’, in Rudiger Frank, James E. Hoare, Patrick Kollner and Susan Pares (eds.), Korea Yearbook. Volume 3. Politics, Economy and Society 2009. Leiden: Brill. 329–48. Burghart, Sabine and James Hoare. (2009). ‘Relations between the Two Koreas in 2008’, in Rudiger Frank, James E. Hoare, Patrick Kollner, and Susan Pares (eds.), Korea Yearbook: Vol.3. Politics, Economy and Society 2009. Leiden: Brill, 58–68. Butler, Oliver. (2002). ‘Getting the games: Japan, South Korea and the co-hosted World Cup’ in John Horne and Wolfram Manzenreiter (eds.), Japan, Korea and the 2002 World Cup. London: Routledge, 43–55.

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INDEX Adeneur, Konrad 149 Agreement on Reconciliation, Non-Agression, Cooperation and Exchange 86, 88, 94 Albright, Madeleine 101 Andrews, David 13, 28 Andrianov, Konstantin 51, 54 Appadurai, Arjun 13 April 25 football club 118, 130 Arirang Festival see Mass Games Armstrong, Charles 59, 62 Asian fijinancial crisis 71, 89 Asian Football Confederation (AFC) 93, 121 Asian Cup Finals (football) 1956 Hong Kong 50, 57 1960 Seoul 57 2004 Beijing 15 Asian Games (Summer and Winter) 1951 New Delhi 50 1962 Jakarta 54 1966 Bangkok 58 1970 Seoul/Bangkok 58 1982 New Delhi 62 1986 Seoul 66, 72, 75–76 1990 Beijing 76, 82, 86, 88, 111 1994 Hiroshima 91 1998 Bangkok 95–96 2002 Pusan 99–100 2003 Aomori 100 2006 Doha 104 2010 Guangzhou 121 2011 Astana-Almaty 121 2023 bidding 156 Asian Games Federation (AGF) 50, 58, 66 Atlee, Clement 49 Axis of Evil 101 Baehr, Peter 40 Bairner, Alan 16,79, 119, 141 Beal, Tim 114n Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) 110, 112 Blatter, Sepp 99, 117 Bonner, Nick 119 Brandt, Willy 142 Breen, Michael 74 British Foreign Offfijice 56

Brundage, Avery 10, 48, 51–53, 55, 148–149, 153–154 Bush, George W. 101, 167 Butler, Oliver 93 Byun, Jin-heung 164 Cairo Declaration 29 Carrington, Ben 8 Carter, Jimmy 90 Castro, Fidel 67 Chaebol (conglomerate) 39, 72–73, 95, 136–138 Chang, Han-pun 49 Chang, Jey Young 54 Chang Ung 87,103, 118, 120, 133 Cha, Victor 10, 76, 115 Chen Shui-bian 155 Cheonan sinking 114, 123 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 12, 146–147 Choe Kwang-sik 135, 138 China (People’s Republic of) Beijing Olympics 110, 163 Seoul Olympics 75 Sports development 12, 153 Taiwan relations 19, 146–147, 153–156, 167 Cho Seong-sik 137 Chollima movement 40 Choson Sports Association (CSA) 26, 28, 31, 48 Choung Byoung-gag 135 Clinton, Bill 90 Clough, Ralph 60 Confucius 8, 17 Constructivism 16 Chun Doo Hwan 62–63, 66–67, 72–73, 77, 161 Chung Dong-suh 86 Chung Mong-joon 93, 97–99 Chung Ju-yung 94 Cronin, Mike 13, 157 Csernai, Pal 91 Davis, Lisa Kim 74 De Coubertin, Baron Pierre 14 Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) 18, 32, 94, 99, 111, 123

184

index

Democratic Confederal Republic of Koryo 62 Democratic People’s Republic of Korea see Korea, North Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, Joint Declaration 86 Dinnie, Keith 14 Dong-a Ilbo 28 East Asian Games 118 East Germany see Germany, East and West Edstrom, Sigfrid 48 ElBaradei, Mohamed 104 Eoyang, Eugene 8 Exeter, Marquess of 141 Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) see Germany (East and West) Far Eastern Games 27 Feminism 16 FIFA (Federation Internationale de Football Association) 12, 56–57, 62, 93–94, 116, 122, 148, 157 Four-Party Talks 90 Functionalism 17, 94, 163 GANEFO (Games of the Newly Emerging Forces) 54–56, 153 Gangwon province 105, 122, 160, 166 George VI, King 49 German Democratic Republic (GDR) see Germany (East and West) Germany, East and West 52, 75, 141–143, 147–150, 156, 168 Gills, Barry 62, 76 Girginov, Vassil 10 Goldblatt, David 57 Gorbachev, Mikhail 76, 143 Grayson, James 23, 55 Guttmann, Allen 54 Haas, Michael 17 Haggard, Stephan 20 Haigh, Stephen 9 Hallstein doctine 19 Hallyu (‘Korean wave’) 74 Han Sung-joo 116 Hamman, Mohamed bin 121 Ha, Nam-gil 25, 34, 73 Hanbando (unifijication flag) 96 Henry, Ian 8, 19–20 Hiddinck, Gus 97 Hill, Christopher 10, 150, 156 Hoberman, John 14, 160

Hobsbawm, Eric 13 Ho Chi Minh 145 Honecker, Erich 143 Hong Chun-pyo 125 Hong Kong 51–53, 155 Hongxing Erke 112, 133 Horne, John 9 Houlihan, Barrie 10, 12, 15 Hwang Jang Yop 67 Hwang Young-cho 88 International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) Championships 125, 168 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 86, 100–101, 114 International Olympic Committee (IOC) 3, 10, 47–48, 105, 119–120, 124, 134, 141 Hosting of Seoul Olympics 67–69, 77 Recognition of North Korean Olympic Committee 50–54 Recognition of South Korean Olympic Committee 48 United Korean team 50–55, 85, 103–104, 110, 112, 149 International Paralympic Committee 132 International Taekwondo Federation (ITF) 120, 133 Jackson, Steven 9 Jang Song Thaek 88n, 133 Jarvie, Grant 11 Japan Co-hosting World Cup 93–94 Colonial period in Korea 25–29 Opening up Korea 24 Relations with South Korea 36, 59, 164–165 Jhe Seong-ho 58, 164–165 Joint Declaration (North-South 2000) 95 Jong Song Ok 111, 132 Jong Tae So 117 Juche (self-reliance) 3, 39, 41, 79, 89, 119, 160 Junior World Football Championships 87 Kanghwa, Treaty of 24 Kelly, James 101 Kennedy, Robert 13 Killanin, Lord 10, 154, 156 Kim, Bang-chool 37–38, 72 Kim Dae-jung 4, 36, 94–98, 101–102, 161 Kim Il Sung 3, 4, 30, 52 Anniversary of birth 126–127

index Defeating rivals 34, 40–41 Relations with South Korea 59, 75, 85 Relations with Soviet Union 30, 32 Sports policy 31, 41–45, 56, 58, 61, 160 Succession 78–79, 89 See also Juche Kim Jong Hun 117–118 Kim Jong Il 78, 89, 95, 103, 106, 111, 117–118, 125–126, 131, 161. Sports policies 57, 79–80, 91, 113, 121 Succession to son 125–126 See also Juche Kim Jong-kil 104, 110 Kim Jong-min 135 Kim Jong Su 113 Kim Jong Un 125–126, 161 Kim Sang-woo 104 Kim Tuk Jun 43 Kim Un-yong 96–97, 103 Kim Yong Nam 111–112, 163 Kim Young-sam 89–90, 92–94 Kim Yu-na 123–124, 137 Koh, Byung Chul 164 Koh, Eunha 28, 98 Kojong, King 25 Korea Christian missionaries 24 Division in 1945 29 History 17 Japanese colonization 24–29 Nationalism 25–26, 28–29 Traditional sports 23–24 Western sports arrival 24 Korean Air airliner bombing 63, 78 Korean Amateur Sports Association 38 Korean Athletic Federation 30–31 Korean Confederation of Trade Unions 95 Korean Olympic Committee (KOC) 27, 48–49, 134 Korea, North Anti-colonialism 18 GANEFO membership 54–55 Humanitarian crisis 92 Korean War 32–34 Ministry of Physical Culture and Sport 133 Missile tests 104, 114, 127 Nuclear weapon development 90, 100–101, 114, 126–127 Physical culture 41–43, 126, 129–134 Socio-economic situation 20, 40, 92, 131 Wartime destruction 34 see also Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, juche.

185

Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation (KEDO) 90, 100 Korean People’s Army (KPA) 129–130 Korean Sport Promotional Association 28 Korean Sports Council (KSC) 37, 134 Korean War 18, 32–34, 36, 40, 49, 82 Korean Workers Party (KWP) 40–42, 44, 62, 79–80, 132 Korea, South Anti-communism 17 Establishment of Republic 29–30 Korean War 32–34, 36 Ministry of Sport (and successors) 72, 92, 97, 134–135, 139 Physical education 35–38, 135, 138 Professional sport 72–73 Relations with Japan 36, 59, 164–165 Korea Sports Foundation 26, 28 Korea Sports Fund 113 Korea Sports Union 31 Kuomintang (KMT) 146–147 Kye Sun Hi 92, 132 Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) 136 Lammer, Manfred 148, 150 Larson, James 74 Lee Chang-dong 135 Lee Hoi-chang 98 Lee Hurak 59 Lee Jung Woo 79, 119 Lee Kun-hee 137 Lee Myung-bak 109–113, 116–117, 163 Lee Sang-beck 48 Lee Won-soon 48 Lee Yun-taek 110 Liberalism 16, 162 Li Chang Su 88 Li Jong Ok 56 Lim Soo-kyung 81 Li Song Suk 61 Lu, Paul Zhouxiang 45n Lynn, Hyung Gu 19 Maguire, Joseph 7–8, 13 Mangan, J.A. 13, 25, 34, 73 Mangyongdae Prize International Marathon 80, 92, 133 Mao Zedong 15, 33 Maraniss, David 149 Marxism 16, 41 Mass games 118–119 Mayer, Otto 52 Ma Ying-jeou 147, 156

186

index

McCormick, John 17 McEachern, Patrick 20 Mencius 8 Merkel, Udo 119, 150, 165 Min Gwan-shik 38 Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST), see Korea, South Mitrany, David 17 Monnington, Terry 13 Moon Ki Nam 132 Mt. Kumgang 99, 114 Mun Jae Dok 104–105 Myers, B.R. 119 Nam Sung-yong (Nam Shoryu) 27–28 National identity 9–10, 13–14 Nationalism 9–10, 13–14, 159, 165 Popular 14, 159 State 14, 159 Nation branding 14 National Olympic Committee (NOC) North Korea 43 South Korea, see Korean Olympic Committee Nixon, Richard 59 Noland, Marcus 20 Nora, Pierre 18 Northern Limitation Line 99, 116 North-South Joint Declaration (1972) 58–59 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) 90 Nuclear weapons crisis 90, 100–101, 104, 110, 114, 126–127, 166 O Hyun Ju 43 Ok, Gwang 28, 35–36 Onesti, Giulio 154 Olympic Charter 15, 47 Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) 75, 156 Olympic Games (Summer and Winter) 1932 Los Angeles 27, 153 1936 Berlin 27–28, 147 1948 St. Moritz 48 1948 London 48–49 1952 Helsinki 50, 153 1952 Oslo 50 1956 Melbourne 50, 148, 153 1960 Rome 50–52, 148, 154 1964 Innsbruck 53 1964 Tokyo 52–54, 66, 70, 149, 166–167 1968 Mexico 54–55 1972 Munich 55, 59, 149 1976 Montreal 69, 150, 154–155 1980 Moscow 65

1984 Los Angeles 63, 65, 69, 72, 75 1988 Seoul 3, 55, 65–83, 167 1992 Barcelona 88 1996 Atlanta 91–92 2000 Sydney 4, 96, 166 2004 Athens 100, 103 2008 Beijing 8, 103, 110–113, 136, 163 2010 Pyeongchang bid 105, 122–123 2010 Vancouver 134 2012 London 168 2014 Pyeongchang bid 104–105 2018 Pyeongchang bid 83, 122–123, 137, 159–160 Olympic Park 69–70, 135 Olympic torch (flame) relay 110–111, 155, 157, 167 Olympism 15 Paek Hyun-sup 112 Pak Doo Ik 1, 56–57, 111, 117 Pak Hak Son 110 Pak Myong Chol 96–97, 132–133 Pak Se-ri 136–137 Pak Yong Sun 44, 130 Park Chul Un 86, 88 Park Chung-hee 2, 37, 161 Economic policies 36–37 Military coup 35 Political control 36–37 Sports policies 36–39, 58, 66, 159–160 Park Geun-hye 97 Park, Han S. 17 Park Ji-sung 137 Park, Jong-kyu 66 Park Sang-Hyun 63, 163–164 Park Se-jik 68, 74, 77 Park Seung-soo 74 Park Sung-il 163 Park Tae-hwan 112, 137 People’s Republic of China (PRC), see China Parry, Jim 10 Peppard, Victor 15 Physical Culture and Sports Committee 50 Physical Culture and Sports Guidance Commission (PCSGC) 110 Ping-pong diplomacy 15, 59, 150 Podoler, Guy 102 Potsdam Conference 29 Pound, Richard 54, 67–68, 77 Preuss, Holger 70 Putin, Vladimir 105, 123 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics bids, see Olympic Games

index Pyongyang Cup International Football Games 91 Pyongyang Summits (North-South) 2000 4, 95, 166 2007 4, 106 Pyongyang University of Physical Education 43 Rangoon attack 63 Realism 16 Reagan, Ronald 160–161 Red Cross 60, 63 Red Devils 98 Republic of China, see Taiwan Republic of Korea, see Korea, South Rhee, Syngman 2, 6, 30, 32–36 Ri Gwang Gun 99 Rice, Condoleezza 102n Rikidozan 132 Rim Jung Son 56 Riordan, James 15 Robinson, Michael 25 Rogge, Jacques 102–105, 112, 120, 122 Romania 85 Roh Moo-hyun 98–99, 102–103, 105–106, 161 Roh Tae Woo 66, 68, 72, 75–77, 81–82, 86, 88 Ryang, Sonia 41, 131 Saleh, Ali Abdullah 144 Samaranch, Juan Antonio 68, 77, 96 Segyehwa (globalization) 89 Seoul Olympic Organizing Committee (SLOOC) 68, 74–75, 77 See also Olympic Games (Summer and Winter) Seoul Olympics Sports Promotion Foundation (SOSFO) 135 Seoul-Pyongyang football match 31 Shin Eui Hang 39, 73, 92 Shin Gi-wook 25 Shin Keum Dan 53 Shipley, Arthur 61 Silk, Michael 21 Six-Party Talks 101, 104, 110, 114, 167 Smith, Hazel 20 Snyder, Scott 165 Soccer War 15 Sohn, Hak-kyu 163 Sohn, Kee-chung (Son Kitei) 27–28, 88 Son Key-young 94, 102 Song Young-shik 93 Soviet Union

187

Collapse 89, 91 Diplomatic recognition of South Korea 76, 164 Joined IOC 51 Physical culture 11–12 Red Sport International 11 Support for North Korea 30, 43, 51 Sport Defijinition 7 Mega-events 65 Sports studies typologies 19–21 Traditional Korean 23–24 Sportization 7–8 Ssirum wrestling 23. 72 Stalin, Josef 33 Stoph, Will 142 Sugden, John 16, 141 Sukarno, President 54 Summits (North-South), see Pyongyang Summits Sunshine Policy 94, 102 Taekwondo 23, 100, 119–120 Taenung athletic village 38, 138 Taiwan 19, 146–147, 153–156, 167 Team Spirit military exercises 64, 78, 86, 90 The Olympic Programme (TOP) 70–71 Tripartite Talks proposal 63 Ulbricht, Walter 149 United Nations 30, 32–33, 86, 88 United Nations Educational, Scientifijic and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) 15 United States Korean War 32–34 Policy towards North Korea 101, 114, 126–127, 167 Professional sport 13 US-North Korea Framework Agreement (1994) 90, 110 US-Soviet Commission 30 Vellapan, Peter 93 Vision 3000 109 See also Lee Myung-bak Vietnam (North and South) 145, 152–153, 155, 167 White, Ryan 28 World Cup Finals (football) 1954 Switzerland 36, 57 1966 England 1, 56–57, 162 1994 qualifying tournament 91

188

index

2002 Korea-Japan 92–94, 97–99, 115, 159, 164 2010 South Africa 8, 115–118 2011 Germany (Women’s) 121–122 2022 South Korean hosting bid 116 World Festival of Youth and Students (WFYS) 80–81 World Shooting Championships 66 World Table Tennis Championships 44–45, 61–62, 79, 87, 96–97 World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) 120

Yalta Conference 29 Yang Dong-ja 163 Yang, Y.E. 136–137 Yemen (North and South) 143–144, 150–152, 167 Yi dynasty 23–24 YMCA 25–27, 30–31, 49 Yoo In-chon 135 Yuh Woo-hyung 31 Yu Ok-kyum 48 Yushin restoration 36–37 Yu Sun Kim 44, 55

Xu Guoqi 12

Zhou Enlai 45