North Korea withdraws from Tokyo Olympics, citing COVID-19 concerns
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Wednesday, April 7, 2021
The North Korean government announced Tuesday it would not participate in the delayed Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics “to protect players from the world public health crisis caused by COVID-19”, its first official withdrawal from the Games since the North Korea-led boycott of the 1988 Summer Olympics held in Seoul, South Korea.
According to South Korea’s Ministry of Unification, this is the first time North Korea withdrew from a major international states event due to concerns of infectious disease. Several athletes from multiple disciplines did not participate in the 2016 Summer Olympics over concerns of the Zika virus, for example, but North Korea did.
While the nation claims to have no cases of the virus, professor of North Korean studies at Ewha Womans University Park Won Gon says it has shown “a coronavirus-related neurosis since it declared an emergency anti-virus system in January last year”, adding it was very unlikely the country would be able to procure enough vaccines for its population by July, when the Olympics are scheduled to take place.
Daily NK reported last year North Korea had by November 2020 placed 81 thousand people in quarantine and, by October 22, placed 32,011 in isolation. A source told Daily NK over 300 people had died in an isolation centre in Anju, South Pyongan.
Director of Asian Studies at Temple University, Japan Campus Jeff Kingston told CBS this decision was a setback for diplomacy, with CBS also reporting Seoul’s disappointment at the nation’s nonattendance, depriving South Korea a chance to rekindle relations with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. North Korea has recently increased tensions with South Korea and the United States; sister of Kim Jong-un Kim Yo Jong warned March 16 “[t]he peaceful spring days of three years ago are unlikely to return”, and mocking South Korean leaders as “all born with stupidity” and “become the dumb and deaf bereft of judgement”.
This comes also after a two ballistic missile tests on March 24, described by former admiral of the Japanese fleet Yoji Koda as “just the beginning of North Korean fervour.”
North Korea participated in the 1964 Summer Olympics boycott of the Olympics held in Tokyo and 1984 Summer Olympics boycott of the Olympics held in Los Angeles.