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North, South Korea make plans for unified team

Posted on: Tuesday, 6 December 2005, 00:31 CST

By Jon Herskovitz

SEOUL (Reuters) - North and South Korea will try to make a symbolic dream of unification a reality when they meet on Wednesday to discuss forming a joint team for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and for the 2006 Asian Games in Doha.

Still technically at war, the two Koreas first considered competing as a joint team for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, but years of acrimony and military tensions meant it remained just an idea.

Despite recent warming ties between Seoul and Pyongyang that have given some South Korean officials optimism ahead of the talks, athletes and coaches say the barriers blocking the formation of a unified team may be too high to clear.

Senior sports officials from the two Koreas agreed on November 1 to compete as a single sports team in Beijing and Doha.

South Korea officials are approaching the talks to be held in the North Korean border city of Kaesong with the utmost caution.

"There is no official agenda for the sports talks because we do not want to build up any expectations," an official from South Korea's Unification Ministry said by telephone.

"This will be a new experience and a significant part of progress toward unification," the official added.

A key question for the talks will be whether the joint team will seek a fair balance of athletes from the North and South or put together the most competitive team possible.

South Korea, with a larger population and better-funded sports associations, has more world-class athletes than North Korea.

At the 2004 Olympics in Athens, South Korea won 30 medals, including nine golds, while North Korea tallied five with no golds.

FAIR AND BALANCED?

"The joint Korean team is founded with good intentions but we have to face reality," said Eom Han-joo, a vice president of South Korea's Volleyball Association, dismissing the idea of a joint team based on parity.

"Which competitive country would like to see its international status slide down?"

Sports officials from the South also said there may be bitterness among its athletes if funding for their sports was cut to boost financing the same sport in the North.

Hwang Young-jo, the South Korean who won the men's marathon gold medal at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, said the only way was to put together a team combining the strengths of North and South Korean athletes.

More medals for both countries in sports would certainly add to the appeal of strength through unity, he said.

"The single team must do better, because, if not, there will be people who think, 'Hey, we shouldn't have unification after all'," Hwang said by telephone.

North and South Korea's combined medal tally at Athens would have been good for seventh overall, between Germany and France. South Korea's was ninth overall while North Korea placed 58th.

The symbols used by a joint team may be the easiest items for the two sides to reach agreement.

Athletes from the two Koreas have joined hands and marched before under one flag -- showing a united Korean peninsula in blue against a white background -- at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and in Athens. They then competed for their separate countries.

The anthem would probably be "Arirang," a Korean folk song admired on both sides of the peninsula, officials said.

The International Olympic Committee has shown support for having a joint Korean team in Beijing.

But time is running short for selecting a joint team for the Asian Games in Doha, and history is not on their side.

North and South Korea competed as a single team in an aborted experiment in soccer and table tennis in the early 1990s.

West and East Germany remained tough sporting rivals right up to unification in 1990.

(additional reporting by Lee Jin-joo and Jack Kim)

Source: REUTERS

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