Kim Kyung-sung, head of the South-North Sports Exchange Association / Courtesy of Kim Kyung-sung
North Korean footballers will play in the South for the first time in years on Wednesday evening, when Naegohyang Women's FC faces Suwon FC Women in a match that offers a rare glimpse of inter-Korean sports engagement.
For Kim Kyung-sung, a veteran civic activist who has spent more than two decades using sports to help build bridges between the two Koreas by promoting South-North sports exchanges, the occasion was encouraging — but he warns that the way Seoul is handling it could jeopardize more than the match.
Kim said Seoul must drop what he calls the "inter-Korean frame" and treat North Korea strictly as an international sports counterpart if it wants to keep the door to dialogue open.
“North Korea has already declared the South and the North to be ‘two hostile states,’” Kim said during an interview with The Korea Times. “From their point of view, there is effectively no inter-Korean exchange anymore and if Seoul keeps using that framework, Pyongyang is likely to bristle.”
