After table tennis in the 70s, then very recently ice hockey, basketball could well establish itself as the new “diplomatic” sport.
A delegation of around fifty South Korean athletes, including an entire basketball team, landed on Tuesday July 3 at Pyongyang airport, in North Korea.
Announced objective of the visit: to continue the unification effort between the two Koreas, begun with great fanfare at the PyeongChang Winter Games.
According to Korean media, the delegation from Seoul traveled en masse to Pyongyang. It would have precisely 101 people, including a few handfuls of coaches and the inevitable group of journalists. She made the trip in the morning aboard two military planes. It is led by South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon.
Highlight of the stay: the organization of four friendly basketball matches between the North and the South. They will take place on Wednesday July 4 and Thursday July 5. The first is intended to be symbolic: it marks the anniversary of the North-South joint declaration of July 4, 1972, the founding stage of the inter-Korean dialogue.
These basketball meetings will be the first between the two neighbors of the peninsula for 15 years. The latest one has passed into posterity. It was organized in 2003, in Pyongyang, on the occasion of the opening of a sports hall financed by the South Korean group Hyundai. At home, the North had made the South bend like a reed under the squall. The score: 86-57. A success to be largely attributed to a basket phenomenon, Ri Myong Hun, measured at 2,35 meters under the gauge.
According to the Korean media, Kim Jong-un would not be foreign to the choice of basketball as a new diplomatic tool. The North Korean leader has a great passion for the discipline. Over the last few years, he has developed a friendly but very improbable relationship with the former Chicago Bulls pivot, Dennis Rodman. Kim Jong-un is said to have suggested the idea of meetings between the two Koreas during the historic summit last April with Mon Jae-in, the South Korean president.
Very agreed comment from the North Korean Minister of Sports, Won Kil-u, upon the arrival at the airport of the South Korean delegation: “ We are proud that sport is taking the initiative in opening up to peace. »
For the record, the South Korean delegation's visit began with an official welcome dinner on Tuesday evening at the Okryugwan restaurant in Pyongyang, an establishment known in the capital for its cold noodle dishes, "naengmyeon". The North Korean Minister of Sports, Kim Il-guk, was expected to take a seat at the head of the table.
The rest promises to be a bit more aquatic. The two Koreas announced late last month their decision to form unified teams in rowing, women's basketball and dragon boating at the next Asian Games, scheduled for August 18 to September 2, 2018 in Indonesia. They will also march in unison, under a unified flag, at the opening ceremony.
