“This is probably the most significant image of this Olympics,” said one social media publish on the Chinese platform Weibo declared Tuesday, after China won the gold medal in mixed doubles table tennis at the 2024 Games in Paris.
But in the now-viral photo of the medalists taking a selfie on the podium, the Chinese athletes are the ones who attract the least attention. Instead, stealing the show are the North Korean silver medalists and South Korean bronze medalists, who were seen huddled together at a time of rising tensions in their country.
O Victory selfie—as coined by the organizers of the Olympics—has became a trend at the Paris Olympics, after the practice was not allowed at previous Olympics. This year, however, medalists were able to take photos of themselves on the podium using phones from sponsor Samsung, the South Korean conglomerate.
The Korean Peninsula (and China) selfie comes at a time when bilateral relations between Seoul and Pyongyang are perhaps at their lowest level since the Korean War. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un declared in January that the North would no longer seek peaceful reunification with the South and that it had “no intention of avoiding” war. And in recent months, North Korea has stepped up its missile tests and launched balloons filled with trash and poop over the border in response to propaganda leaflets that South Korean activists have sent in the opposite direction.
Although North Korea has long been a pariah in world politics, it has taken a different approach to athletics, seeing the sport as a form of humanize your regime— what came to be known as “sports diplomacy”. (Kim Jong-un likes basketball so much that he famously formed an unlikely friendship with former NBA star Dennis Rodmanwhile his late father, Kim Jong-il, was known for his love of golf.)
International sporting events like the Olympic Games provide a rare arena for civil interactions between North and South Korea, which are technically still at war with each other. The two Koreas marched together under the same flag at the 2000 and 2004 Summer Olympics, as well as the 2006 Winter Games. (They also marched together at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, although a similar plan for the Paralympics failed after the two sides failed to agree on a flag.) And at the 2016 Rio Olympics, another selfie taken by South Korean gymnast Lee Eun-ju and her North Korean counterpart, Hong Un-jong, went viral and was hailed as a testament to how sport transcends politics.
Last year, South Korean weightlifter Kim Su-hyeon shared stories of warm interactions with the North Korean rivals she regularly sees at competitions, including the time a North Korean coach approached her and told her to “keeps” at last year’s Asian Games. But at the same Games, South Korean basketball player Kang Lee-seul he said she was “a little disappointed” that her North Korean counterparts completely ignored her, even when she called them out – despite athletes from both sides having previously played together on a joint team at the 2018 Asian Games.
North Korea has also sought to host its own international sporting events, including an annual event amateur golf tournament held on the same golf course used by Kim Jong-un. And the leaders of the two Koreas have toyed with the idea of co-hosting the World Cup or the Olympics for years, though such efforts have repeatedly stalled amid tensions in diplomatic relations.
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At the Paris Summer Olympics, the first Olympic Games in which North Korea participates after missing Tokyo because of the pandemic, 16 North Korean athletes compete in events ranging from table tennis to gymnastics and wrestling.
The Paris Games started a little more difficult – at the opening ceremony, the South Korean contingent was introduced as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the official name of North Korea, provoking consternation among South Koreans and their leaders and prompting an apology from organizers. But the selfie is gone acclaimed as exemplifying “the true spirit of the Olympics”.
The athletes themselves didn’t have much to say about their historical background or each other. On Tuesday, Lim Jong-hoon, the South Korean rower who took the selfie, gave only a brief response to reporters who asked about his team’s interactions with the North Koreans. “When they presented the silver medalists, we congratulated them both. Otherwise, we didn’t really talk to each other,” he said.
Meanwhile, when reporters later asked whether the North Korean team felt any “rivalry” against their South Korean counterparts, North Korean player Kim Kum-yong simply said, “No, we don’t.”
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
