North
Korea calls for unity with South as hockey players begin Olympics
training
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[January 25, 2018]
By Christine Kim and Josh Smith
SEOUL (Reuters) - A delegation of North
Korean officials and ice hockey players crossed the heavily guarded
border into South Korea on Thursday for joint Olympics training, as
Pyongyang called for all Koreans to seek unification of the two
nations.
The group included 12 North Korean players who will form a combined
women's ice hockey team with their southern counterparts at next
month's Winter Olympics in the South Korean mountain resort of
Pyeongchang.
After going through South Korean checkpoints at the border, the team
travelled to a national training centre in Jincheon, 90 km (56
miles) south of Seoul.
Stepping off a bus, the athletes ignored questions as they were
mobbed by throngs of media.
They wore puffy winter jackets in the white, blue, and red colours
of North Korea's flag, with "DPR Korea" emblazoned on the back,
referring to the country's official name, the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea.

The athletes were met in Jincheon with flowers from their South
Korean counterparts, as well as head coach Sarah Murray, who
previously had called the government's decision to form a joint team
a "tough situation."
Under an agreement worked out during the first official talks
between the two Koreas in two years, the joint team will wear unity
jerseys and march under a unified peninsula flag at the Games'
opening ceremony on February 9.
South Korea has prepared "all contingency scenarios" in case North
Korea makes any provacative moves during the Olympics, but the games
remain an opportunity for "peaceful engagement," South Korean
foreign minister Kang Kyung-wha told Reuters in an interview on the
sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "We
just need to make the best of it."
Early on Thursday, North Korea sent a rare announcement addressed to
"all Koreans at home and abroad", saying they should make a
"breakthrough" for unification without the help of other countries,
its state media said.
All Koreans should "promote contact, travel, cooperation between
North and South Korea" while adding Pyongyang will "smash" all
challenges against reunification of the Korean peninsula.
North and South Korea remain technically at war after their 1950-53
conflict ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty. Tensions
escalated dramatically last year as the regime of Kim Jong Un
stepped up its programme aimed at developing a nuclear-tipped
missile capable of striking the United States.

PEACE OR PROPAGANDA?
In a separate statement on Thursday, North Korea advertised a new
"large scale" tourist project in coastal Kangwon province, the same
area where South Korean officials have agreed to hold joint athletic
and cultural events around the Olympics.
Some South Korean opposition politicians and conservatives have
criticised Seoul's response to North Korea's participation in the
games, saying Kim was using North Korea's involvement for his own
purposes.
Many other South Koreans welcomed the North's participation, but
complained that the unified women's ice hockey team - the only such
joint team to be formed - was unfair to the players.
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The Olympic Cauldron for the upcoming 2018 Pyeongchang Winter
Olympic Games is pictured at the Alpensia resort in Pyeongchang,
South Korea, January 23, 2018. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

The controversy has sent South Korean President Moon Jae-in's
overall approval rating below 60 percent for the first time since he
took office in May last year, according to a survey released on
Thursday by South Korean pollster Realmeter, dropping more than 6
percentage points since last week.
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence plans to use his attendance at the
Games to try to counter what he sees as Kim's efforts to "hijack"
the games with a propaganda campaign, a White House official said on
Tuesday.
The South Korean government has rejected criticism that the games
had been hijacked by North Korea, saying the event will help defuse
tensions over Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programme.
Still, Washington on Wednesday imposed fresh sanctions on nine
entities, 16 people and six North Korean ships it accuses of helping
the North's weapons programmes. It also urged China and Russia,
North Korea's main allies, to expel North Koreans raising funds for
the programmes.
China, the main source of North Korea's fuel, said on Thursday it
had exported no oil products to North Korea in December except for a
tiny cargo of jet fuel, the latest sign that Beijing has kept up
pressure on its isolated neighbour.
Military tension on the Korean peninsula was a "fundamental
obstacle" for the improvement of inter-Korean relations and
unification, the North's official news agency said in its statement
on Thursday.

It added joint military drills with "outside forces" were unhelpful
for the development of relations between North and South Korea.
South Korea successfully pressed the United States to delay
large-scale annual drills involving the two countries troops until
after the Olympics, but Washington officials have rejected the idea
of a permanent halt to the exercises in exchange for North Korea
freezing its missile and nuclear weapons tests.
The proposal to delay the exercise was based on the "spirit of the
Olympic Games", Foreign Minister Kang said, declining to elaborate
on whether the South would resume the drills after the event.
(Additional reporting by Yuna Park, Hyonhee Shin and Haejin Choi in
SEOUL, and Soyoung Kim in DAVOS, Switzerland; Writing by Josh Smith;
Editing by Lincoln Feast and Neil Fullick)
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