Editorial: Winter Olympics bridges gaps and brings hope

Mark Dawson, editor of Wanganui Chronicle

The Winter Olympics open today in PyeongChang, South Korea — 16 days of drama, thrills and spills.

There will be glory, heartbreak and, no doubt, plenty of stars emerging, but after all that snowbound sporting effort, perhaps these Games will best be remembered for a bunch of female ice hockey players who have little chance of winning a medal.

After a year of nerve-edge tension and belligerence on the Korean peninsula, ice hockey players from the North and South have come together to form a unified team to compete in the Games.

And the the two Koreas will march under one flag (featuring the entire peninsula in blue) at the opening ceremony.

It's not as if peace has suddenly broken out — and the two Koreas are still officially at war, a war which goes back to the division of the peninsula into two in the 1950s.

But it is a hopeful sign that sport can, as it has done many times in the past, bring people together, sweep away ignorance and suspicion and heal some wounds.

The fact that North Korea is turning up at its neighbour's big shindig shows that the two sides have been talking for the first time in years. And the North is sending Kim Yo-jong, the sister of leader Kim Jong-un and a senior official of the regime, to attend the Games.

Contrast the coming together of the ice hockey players with the war of words and sabre-rattling between the North and the South's protector-in-chief, the United States, which we have endured over the past 12 months.

While the country's leaders act like children, it is left to the ordinary people to behave as adults.