It was an unusual sight, and one spectators haven’t seen for eight years: North Korea on an Olympic podium.
Unusual for several reasons, too. The country’s silver medal in table tennis was sealed with the symbolism of a selfie among athletes from South Korea — a show of cross-border harmony amid rising tensions between the neighbouring countries.
And more broadly, the fact North Korea will emerge from the Paris Olympics with medals to show for itself shines a brighter light on the country’s often peculiar, sometimes on-and-off relationship with the Games.
North Korea’s Ri Jong Sik and Kim Kum Yong settled for silver in mixed doubles table tennis on Tuesday, losing to longtime superpower China. With 16 athletes at the Games, it was the first time the country has medaled since 2016, when it won seven medals at the Rio Olympics. (It went medal-less at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, skipped Tokyo 2020 due to COVID-19 concerns, and was suspended from participating at the 2022 Beijing Games for skipping Tokyo.)
The podium selfie was a brief show of unity between the two countries as tensions between the two have intensified this summer. North Korea has most recently sent thousands of trash-filled balloons over the border, landing in South Korea — a Cold War tactic responding to the latter country sending anti-North Korea pamphlets over the border.
After the tournament, Kim and Ri both shook their heads when asked if they saw the South Korean pair as their rivals. While the Korean War ended in 1953 through an armistice, the countries still haven’t signed a peace treaty.
North Korea has only been participating in the Olympics since 1964 and has collected 59 medals, 16 of them gold. Over that time, its involvement in the Olympics have not helped simmer tensions.
At the 1988 Seoul Olympics, the South Korean delegation attempted to involve North Korea in a limited slate of competitions — including a proposal to hold cycling races that started in North Korea and ended in its southern counterpart, which partly led to those talks falling apart.
The spirit of cooperation, however, was revived at the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang when the two countries marched under one flag.
Geopolitics aside, the North Koreans have long struggled to put forward a competitive team of athletes, which sometimes results in ridicule.
At the Winter Games, the small delegation sometimes manages to capture the spotlight through last-place finishes and the odd face-plant on the ice.
North Korea has comparatively fared well at the Summer Games, performing best at weightlifting (18 medals) and wrestling (10 medals), with a handful in boxing (eight) and judo (eight).
And while poor performances by North American athletes are at worst treated with ambivalence by their home countries, North Korea frequently humiliates its small pool of athletes who fail to perform at a high level on the international stage.
In 2018, Jacob Kovalio, an Asia-Pacific history expert and associate professor at Carleton University, suggested athletes would be subject to public shaming after a poor performance at those Winter Games.
“Within a week we’ll know what if any repercussions these poor souls when they went back to North Korea suffered for not showing the world how wonderful the regime is,” Kovalio said at the time.
The country is known to shame its athletes in order to pressure them into improving their performance, he said, which involved a period of self-criticism where the member must admit to their mistakes.
In 2014, former North Korean boxer Choi Hyun Mi told CNN those shaming sessions have been known to intensify when North Korean athletes lose to rivals such as Japan, South Korea or the U.S.
North Korea’s best outing of nine medals at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics is likely out of reach this year as the country has only a few events remaining in Paris.
Having already won silver in this year’s women’s synchronized 10-metre platform dive, the team is also putting forward athletes in boxing, judo and a handful of other diving and table tennis events.
“We are not satisfied with the silver medal,” North Korean diver Kim Mi Rae told reporters after the competition. “We really wanted to give gold to our country, but the performance was not done as we expected, as we tried, so we have some regrets about it. But we are still happy and excited.
“I like Paris very much, it is so beautiful. For the next time we will try hard for gold.”
— Files from Postmedia
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