London Hibbs - North and South Korea Uniting Athletes at 2018 Winter Olympics
On January 17, 2018, North and South Korea announced that they would be in marching their athletes together, under one undivided Korean flag, at the opening ceremony of the 2018 winter Olympics. The countries are also planning to send a conjoined women's ice hockey team, and North Korea will be sending a 140 member orchestra to the Olympics in Pyeongchang. According to the New York Times, this great a gesture of reconciliation hasn't occurred in ten years.
Hopefully, this agreement will ease tension between the two countries, especially after the 1988 Seoul Olympics that caused North Korea to bomb a passenger jet in an attempt to disrupt the games that were taking place in the south. In past tries (9 attempts in earlier years) to merge the athletes, questions of how fair the teams' circumstances were caused even more conflict between the north and the south. So far, the North only has a pair of figure skaters that qualified in time for the Olympics in February.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/17/world/asia/north-south-korea-olympics.html
I'm glad that there is a sort of peace between the two countries but I think it overlooks some of the larger issues behind their disagreements. Like how North Koreans suffer under the dictatorship.
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