The Olympic rings and the flag of Japan, in Tokyo on March 15, 2021. – NEW CHINA / SIPA
Sportsmen from North Korea will not see Tokyo after all. Pyongyang has indeed decided to give up the Olympic Games this summer “in order to protect athletes from the global health crisis caused by Covid-19”, announced the North Korean Ministry of Sports.
Pyongyang’s waiver announcement, dated Monday, was posted on the Sports Ministry website the next day. She refers to a meeting of the North Korean National Olympic Committee on March 25. The holding of this meeting was reported by the official North Korean news agency KCNA without however mentioning the decision concerning the Olympic Games.
For North Korea, the Olympics are more than just a sporting event. They also represent, and above all, a means of doing diplomacy for this nuclear power isolated from the rest of the world. His participation in the last Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, was thus a decisive factor in the spectacular rapprochement that took place in 2018 with the United States and South Korea. Kim Yo-jong, sister of leader Kim Jong-un, had attended the Games as her brother’s envoy, and the North Korean participation was widely publicized.
The announcement made on Tuesday by Pyongyang therefore puts an end to Seoul’s hopes of using the 2020 Games, postponed until this summer due to the coronavirus pandemic, to stimulate a relaunch of the discussion process between Pyongyang and Washington. It has been at a standstill since the failure of a Kim-Trump summit in Hanoi, capital of Vietnam, in February 2019.