Locals react to importance of Winter Olympics for North & South Korea

UPDATE 2/9/2018 4:15 p.m.: North and South Korea, marching together as a team under a unified flag during the opening ceremonies of the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang is a moment many consider significant considering the tension between the two countries.

The Olympic Games are supposed to be a “coming together” of different countries for friendly competitions, but it hasn’t always been that way, especially in South Korea.

“Back in 1988, when South Korea was hosting the Olympics, North Korea bombed an airliner to try and intimidate other countries from sending athletes to the Olympics there,” said Shea Cotton, a research assistant at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies.

30 years later, it’s looking very different. Kim Jung Un sent his sister to South Korea.

“This is the first time a member of the Kim family has visited South Korea since the Korean War,” Cotton said. “That is a pretty major milestone and might mark maybe a new openness or willingness to negotiate and ease tensions.”

Dana Park is from Chungju, which is out of Pyeongchang. She said over the last few years, news of North Korea’s nuclear program and its threats have put the area into a bad light.

“But now since the Olympics is being hosted and they’re really promoting the peace between North Korea and South Korea, I think the people are starting to look at the situation in a positive light, so I think it’s really great,” Park said.

The threats haven’t been enough to deter nearly 3,000 athletes and thousands of spectators from going to Pyeongchang. But it’s unlikely the Olympic Games will end the tension between the two countries.

“We’ve thought a lot about what a success from something like this would look like,” Cotton said. “We don’t think after the Olympics there’s going to be a complete relaxation of tensions, (that) North Korea is going to get rid of its nuclear weapons. That’s probably not going to happen. Instead what we kind of hope is this would set the stage for further talks. It wouldn’t end the crisis altogether but perhaps set the stage for a way we could end the crisis, so that’s what we’re hoping will result from something like this.”

ORIGINAL: South Koreans from all over the world are keeping their eye on the games that includes one student at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies.

Dana Park is from Chungju, which is south of Pyeongchang. She said over the last few years, news of North Korea’s nuclear program and its threats have put the area into a bad light. She hopes that the Olympics, which is supposed to bring different nations together, will show there can be peace between North and South Korea.

“I think hosting the Olympics successfully not only means it will be a successful sporting event, I think it means something more than that given the situation, the tension is pretty intense in the peninsula, so I really hope this opportunity for the people to think that ‘ok, we’re not fighting so we can think about peace,” said Park.

We also spoke to a research assistant at Middlebury about these countries’ relations and the Olympics.

They said they hope the games will set the stage for a way to end the crisis between the two countries.

KION’s Mariana Hicks has the full story on News Channel 5, 46 at 6 p.m.