In the Winter Olympics of 2018, South and North Korea, political enemies since the Korean War of the early 50s, put aside their differences to march under one flag (Appendix 1). Steeped in political niceties, the event came to represent a change in the political landscape in the Korean peninsula, a stark reminder of the weight that sport carries as a national technology.
In chapter 1 and 2 of his book, Making the American Team, Mark Dyerson asserts the importance of sport in politics. He alludes to the ways in which sporting contests can be used to promote ideals of sportsmanship, good ethics and obedience to law in a country’s youth. A similar vein of political idealism is tapped in the Winter Olympics, where ideas of peace, unity and possibly even unification are made palatable to a reluctant populace through sport. There is no doubt that the gesture, a culmination of Kim Jong-Un’s New Year Day speech and the South Korean government’s enthusiastic response, is a way to break the political ice with sport, an enduring reminder of sport’s role as a national technology.
Dyerson goes on to say that sportspeople act as a country’s role models, and even goes as far as to place political leaders, such as former US president Andrew Jackson, in a sporting realm. This marriage of sport and politics is used as a national technology in the games through athletes from the North and South holding hands, a joint Korea Women’s Ice Hockey team and perhaps most importantly, the presence of high-ranking officials at the games, most of whom did not hesitate in showing niceties to their counterparts across the border (Appendix 2).
Sport acts as a national technology to sway the minds and hearts of a country’s people, and there is no better example than the Koreas marching under one flag. Dyerson’s book plays no small part in explaining how sport affects a nation’s identity, and for the famously proud people of Korea, whose national identity is all-important, this gesture is a small step in reconciliation. While there is criticism from certain corners about the validity of the move, and despite the fact that the Koreas have often marched under one flag in recent times to no political avail, it is certain that it was something that, in the long term, will help to bring peace to a war-ravaged part of the world.
I think what makes the unity between North and South Korea so monumental in the Winter Games was because Korea had been one country before. It seems more of a reconciliation and a step towards healing rather than two enemies joining hands. As a South Korean, my relatives have always expressed the dream and hopes that one day Korea would be united as one country as it had in the past. While sports wont be able to solve all the political tension and dissolve the history between the two countries, I find it interesting that politics can be put in the back burner for something so mundane as sports. It also reminds me of how Democrats and Republicans can come…