North Korea uses Winter Olympics to appease the international community

(Baonghean.vn) - On January 2, after a year full of threats and weapons advances, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un seemed to be using the upcoming Winter Olympics in South Korea as a tool to "dull" the increasing pressure of the international community on the North Korean government while not mentioning the nuclear arsenal.

Analysts say this move by leader Kim Jong-un is aimed at deepening the conflict between Seoul and Washington, which supports a strategy of maximizing pressure and affirms that all options, including military ones, are on the table.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Photo: AP

“A big part of the Kim family’s ‘pastime’ is to exploit and widen the gap in interests, first and foremost between the US and South Korea, but more broadly between the five major regional neighbors including China, Russia and Japan,” said Daniel Russel, a former top US diplomat for East Asia.

This expert commented that North Korea has long pursued such a strong provocation strategy after using conciliatory language to reveal contradictions.

The White House has yet to respond to North Korea's proposal to participate in the Olympics. However, US Senator Lindsey Graham said that the US would boycott the upcoming Winter Olympics if Pyongyang participated.

Security drill ahead of the Olympics. Photo: AP

“Allowing North Korea to participate in the Olympics would legitimize the most illegitimate regime on the planet,” Graham said. “I absolutely believe that if North Korea participated in this sporting event, we would not participate.”

Meanwhile, Professor Robert Kelly of Pusan ​​National University (South Korea) said that the prospect of North Korean athletes and officials participating in the Olympics could cause some awkward moments among international leaders, who have spent months treating the country as an isolated state.

“This puts South Koreans in an awkward position because the move is likely to raise tensions between the United States and Japan, two countries that have spent a lot of time isolating Pyongyang,” Kelly explained.

North Korea uses Winter Olympics to appease the international community. Photo: Getty

However, analysts remain skeptical about whether Kim Jong-un’s “move” will cause lasting damage to the South Korea-US alliance, or to international pressure. “I am skeptical that there will be a significant reversal of global economic and political isolation measures in the short term,” said Scott Snyder, director of US-Korea policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Joshua Pollack, an expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California, said that North Korea is likely to conduct more missile tests in 2018, with a focus on “realistic” exercises rather than tests.

Expert Leon Sigal of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project in New York said that the US needs to reduce, not postpone, the scale of the Spring joint exercises, only then can it ease current tensions./.

(According to Reuters)