Today, Explained - Breaking the Ice with North Korea

Episode Date: February 21, 2018

North and South Korea are on opposite sides of a demilitarized zone, separated by barbed wire, tank traps, and guard towers. But in the 2018 Winter Olympics, they came together on the rink. Is hockey the key to peace with North Korea? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm a firm believer in a good night's sleep, and good sleep starts with a good mattress. Check out the mattresses at Mattress Firm. They've got lots of different mattress brands to choose from, so there's no question you can find a better one. Head to mattressfirm.com slash podcast to learn how you can improve your sleep. When it comes to Olympic hockey, it's all about that gold medal game. That's the one to watch. And if you want to, the women's final is U.S.-Canada, and it's happening tonight.

But a few days ago, there was this game you probably slept through that was way more important. It's almost 1 o'clock in the morning in Pyeongchang, South Korea. This is Motoko Rich. I'm the Tokyo bureau chief for the New York Times, It's almost one o'clock in the morning in Pyeongchang, South Korea. This is Motoko Rich. I'm the Tokyo bureau chief for the New York Times. And I just got back from a historic ice hockey game between the women of Korea and the women of Japan. This is kind of a historic rivalry in so many ways. Japan is ranked ninth in the world.

The Korean team was ranked 22nd in the world. The players are excited. This is Sarah Marie talking. She's Canadian, so Korea let her coach their women's hockey team. That was the game that they wanted to play first. You know, Japan's a rival for us, and our girls want to beat them. They were definitely struggling, and they'd had two pretty big blowouts for their first two games in the Olympics.

Do you recall how bad those blowouts were? Yeah, they were 8-0 both games. Yikes. We go into the arena and it's filling up with all, mostly South Korean fans who are carrying the unified flag, which is sort of a blue map of the unified Korean peninsula. And they're super, super excited because they're playing Japan. Japan occupied the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945. And that legacy overshadows almost everything, but particularly in sports. I talked to tons of fans who were like,

we're here because we're playing against Japan, not because I'm a hockey fan. So there was sort of just this huge energy in the stadium. And then there were also the North Korean cheerleaders. They're all identically dressed, and there are about 200 of them, and they kind of sit around the stadium in groups of something like 25 or 30. This is not by accident. They're doing this so that any camera angle you're going to see them. And they're very synchronized.

They perform these routines that, you know, all 200 of them are doing the exact same thing around the stadium. They're playing all these sort of 80s pop music, you know, Eye of the Tiger kind of stuff. We will, we will rock you. And the North Korean cheerleaders are just very resolutely sticking to their routines. They're never going to bounce to the rhythm. They're not going to lose track of their script, if you will. They're kind of cheering, we are one, we are one. Be strong, or it's okay when the other team scores a goal.

Was it an intense battle, or was it sort of a foregone conclusion? Japan scored two goals right out of the bat, like very quickly. So it did seem at that point, oh no, here we go again, another blowout. But then Korea rallied, and they seemed better matched. And then Randy Hisu Griffin, who's actually American-born but naturalized to play on the team, scored a goal. For Randy Hisu Griffin, skating in and a shot. They score!

Korea! Randy Hisu Griffin! And let the celebration begin. It was the Korean team's first goal of the Olympics, and the stadium just went absolutely nuts. Like, they just had so much support and energy. In the end, Japan still won. But the craziest thing about all those fans losing their mind in South Korea?

They're kind of cheering for North Korea. Kind of like those North Korean cheerleaders are cheering for the South. A unified Korea, but now at least via women's ice hockey. It's part of larger ongoing talks, and women's hockey was the first to be singled out. It's unclear why. These two countries, separated by a demilitarized zone with barbed wire and tank traps and guard towers, they hit the ice to take on Japan together.

I'm Sean Ramos-Verm. This Is Today Explained. It's the only team that had players from both North and South Korea. And this was a team that was basically formed about a month ago. Motoko Rich is going to tell us how North and South Korea buried the hatchet to play Olympic women's hockey. There was a South Korean women's team that had been playing together since about 2013. And then about a month ago, the two governments of North and South Korea decided that they were going to combine their respective women's ice hockey teams into one team. And so a dozen North Korean players were added to the roster at the very last minute for the South Korean team. And at least three of the North Korean players had to dress for each match. So imagine that.

This team had been playing together for five years and then a month before the Olympics. They had to add 12 new players to their roster. When you put these players together who don't really know each other and come from dramatically different, though proximate cultures, what challenges do they face? Well, certainly starting at the most basic is the language issues, which on the one hand, you would think, well, we used to be one country and they all speak Korean. And it turns out that North Koreans speak with a different accent. They don't use the same slang. And then on top of that,

there are many hockey terms that even the South Koreans who speak Korean will say in English. So things like pass, shoot, face off, they would say in English. And so the North Koreans came and they don't have any English words. And so the South Korean team had to teach them the English words. Okay, time out. We were wondering what this actually meant, so Today Explained producer Noam Hassenfeld looked into it. Noam?

Sean? What did you find? So I found a bunch of them. They call positions different things, they call line changes different things, but there were even differences in super essential stuff. Like, South Koreans say pass in English. And what do North Koreans say?

Apparently, North Koreans, when they're calling for a pass, they say send the communication. Send the communication. So you're skating towards the goal. You're open. And Sean, send me a communication. Damn, that sounds like a handicap. What about when they when they actually shoot? So they clearly don't say shoot. They say throw it into the goal. Throw it into the goal. Not easy. No. Okay, back to Motoko. Yeah, game on. Was there some sort of precedent for North and South Korea playing together? In terms of North and South Korean players on the same team, there have been two other times when that's occurred. There was a table tennis event. It was not the Olympics. And then there was a youth soccer tournament in which players from both countries

played on the same team. Is this kind of like when your divorced parents like get together at your graduation and grin and bear it? It feels very strange that these two countries that have literally like a demilitarized zone between them to keep them from fighting would then participate at the Olympics together. The idea behind it is almost the opposite of your analogy about the divorced parents getting together. The idea being that through this hopefully depoliticized event, which of course it's anything but, there will be an opportunity for cultural and social exchange where the two sides get to see,

hey, we're just people here. So the idea is you bring the athletes together, and that is supposed to create sort of more goodwill. And this only happened to the women's team? The men's team didn't have to do a collaboration? Exactly. So that was actually a banner of controversy here in South Korea. The prime minister made this sort of foot-in-mouth comment about how, well, they're only 22nd in the world anyway, so it's not a big deal. And people got very upset about that. And then people also pointed out that it seems unfair that no other team of athletes has to play with North Koreans. Did you discover anything about the North Korean

athletes, like where they're coming from, what their lives are like? From what we understand and know from defectors, it's sort of a Soviet-style program where sport is generally very important in North Korean schools. And so they can recruit the kids off the play yards and then cultivate them. Yeah. They don't have as much money as we know. It's a poor country. And so it's a lot harder for them to come buy sophisticated equipment.

Winter Olympics are really expensive, frankly. I mean, that's true for a lot of countries with not a lot of affluence that it costs a lot to buy snowboarding equipment or ski equipment. Yeah, no fair, Canada. Yeah, exactly. You guys got the books. The whole point of North Korea and South Korea sharing a hockey team was to bring these countries closer together. So, did it work? Can we all stop worrying about nuclear war yet? No pressure, hockey.

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They've got you covered literally, figuratively, approximately. Go to MatchesFirm.com slash podcast to see their latest deals. Matches Firm offers 120-night sleep trial to ensure perfection and 120-night low price guarantee so you know you paid the perfect price. Again, go to MatchesFirm.com slash podcast to learn how your sleep could be tremendously improved. Today Explained, Sean Ramos-Firm, and I'm talking to Motoko Rich from the New York Times about the unified Korean hockey team and whether it can save the world from another war. I know you're not a huge hockey fan, but as a hockey fan myself, when I think about hockey and the Olympics, I think about the miracle on ice. Even I know about that.

Up to show five seconds left in the game. Do you believe in miracles? Yes! Unbelievable. Team USA versus the Soviet Union at the 1980 Olympics up in Lake Placid. This amazing, you know, cinematic moment where you essentially see capitalism beat communism. It was the Cold War represented in one game of hockey. Disney actually makes a movie about it. Some of that seems to be sort of lingering in this matchup between South Korea and North Korea.

It's almost like, you know, all contained within one single team. Are there parallels there? Yeah, I mean, I would argue that there might have been a little bit of that in the unified Korean peninsula playing rivals from the country that occupied their country for 35 years. And so there probably was a little bit of a feeling of that. And had they won, it would have been a very big symbolic victory as well as an athletic one. You were born to be hockey players. And you were meant to be here tonight. There would have been people in the audience that would have kind of taken nationalist pride in that victory, for sure.

And when I talked to analysts before the game, they were sort of saying on the flip side, they were a little concerned, like if they win, that this could be damaging or result in some kind of violence or some kind of anti-Japanese fervor. How did South Korea feel about it? I know you mentioned the sexism element, but what were their more broad feelings

about just collaborating with the North? I think it was very, very mixed. I mean, I would say it was almost split down the middle, that there were those who thought it was a great idea and that they hoped that it would lead to further opportunities. There's certainly eagerness to dial back the tensions on the peninsula. I mean,

the people of South Korea are right on the front lines. They live in a country with a divided and heavily armed border, and they live in sort of existential fear of what could happen if war breaks out on the peninsula. And it could be terribly, terribly bloody, and there would be so many victims. So they want to do anything possible to stop and prevent that. So if by cooperating together in the Olympics, that could reduce tensions, I think most people were supportive of that agenda. I think where people were more ambivalent

or even negative about it was what was supposed to be this moment of pride for South Korea was completely hijacked by the politics, the political theater. The Korean Peninsula flag is not our national flag. We're the ones hosting the Olympics, so our athletes should hold the South Korean flag at the Games. And it wasn't just about the athletes at this point, because North Korea sent a very high-level political delegation. They sent Kim Jong-un's sister, Kim Yo-jong.

Kim Yo-jong will be the first member of the Kim dynasty ever to visit South Korea. Her star has risen meteorically over the past four years. People were chasing her everywhere and she was sort of dubbed the Ivanka of North Korea. Meantime, with the world watching the Olympics, she will put a young, telegenic face on the regime. This is a calculated move from Kim Jong-un, experts say, to answer Ivanka Trump's presence at the closing ceremonies.

People sort of judged that she had kind of won the charm offensive and had softened the image of North Korea and what have you. And then there was sort of a huge backlash saying that how can we even consider her to be a soft side of a terrible dictatorship. In the past was combining these athletes as sort of this unified delegation. Was it sort of about reunification? And at this point it's just about like, look, we're not at each other's throats. It feels like tensions are so much higher this time that reunification isn't even on the table.

I think unification is always sort of lurking in the background. Realistically, everyone says we're not anywhere near talking about unification. We're talking about de-escalating tensions and maybe somehow providing a breakthrough where people are willing to sit down at a table and talk. There are hints that that might actually occur. But we're probably a long way off from that, much less any possibility of reunification. Motoko Rich writes for the New York Times. Some of our Vox colleagues have been in Korea covering these Olympics wall to wall since day one on a podcast called The Podium.

Be sure to check it out. I'm Sean Ramos from this podcast is called Today Explained. Hassenfeld shimmies along the board, scooting it over to editor Bridget McCarthy, who now has control. McCarthy crosses the blue line and guides it tape to tape to producer Luke Vanderploeg, touches it to engineer Afim Shapiro, nifty toe drag, snaps it, scores! And Afim, the dream Shapiro, beats the goalie 5-0 where the sun don't shine. And let's take a look at the replay. If you look closely, you'll see our theme music was composed by Breakmaster Cylinder. You can follow us on Twitter

at today underscore explain. And this podcast is produced in association with Stitcher and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Strong choice of podcast today, people. Thank you.