For North Korean skaters, the short program is part of a bigger plan
GANGNUENG, South Korea — There has been hope for a political thaw on this divided peninsula with a combined Korean team at the opening ceremony and in women’s hockey. There has been boundless intrigue about North Korea’s all-female cheering squad. And Wednesday, there will finally be a much-anticipated performance by North Korea’s only elite athletes at the Winter Olympics.
Figure skaters Ryom Tae Ok, 19, and Kim Ju Sik, 25, are scheduled to compete in the opening round of the pairs competition. They come from the world’s most isolated nation but, to a point, they appear open and expressive and embracing of outside influences. Their choice of music is an instrumental version of the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life,” as performed by guitarist Jeff Beck.
They have zero chance for a medal. Everyone is clear about that. But that is not the measurement for success. The aim for Ryom and Kim is to finish in the top 16 among 22 pairs in the short program, enabling them to participate in the long program Thursday.
They are the only two of 22 North Korean athletes to have qualified for these games by merit instead of wild-card entry. Advancing to the medal round would validate their preparation over the past year and confirm their arrival here via skill instead of largesse.
“They’re not even close to medal contenders,” said Bruno Marcotte, a prominent Canadian coach who has assisted the North Koreans over the last year. “But I’m so happy they’re here because they belong here. They’re a world-class-level team.”
The notion that Ryom and Kim have achieved some international success as individuals “in some respects sits uncomfortably alongside our image of North Korea as the premier collectivist state in which the individual has no role or influence,” said John Nilsson-Wright, an East Asia specialist at Cambridge University and Chatham House, a London-based think tank.
“This question that many of us grapple with when we look at North Korea,” Nilsson-Wright said, “is to what extent as a sports person do you have the kind of autonomy and freedom and opportunity to express yourself as an individual in this very collectivist environment?”
South Koreans have expressed complicated feelings about North Korea’s participation in these Olympics. But individual North Korean athletes appear welcome, and none more than Ryom and Kim, who are the subject of endless curiosity. Ryom, with her ever-ready smile and red wool coat, might have been the most photographed athlete arriving at the Games.
Some have found in her a comparison to another North Korean visitor, Kim Yo Jong — the sister of the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un — who attended the opening ceremony and charmed the South Korea news media without ever speaking in public.
“North Korea will probably use the performance of the figure skaters to boast how much North Korea is getting international attention, just as Kim Yo Jong got the media following her and demonstrated to its people that North Korea has reached a certain status in the world,” said Kim Kyung-sung, president of the South and North Korean Sports Exchange Association.
At a practice Tuesday, South Korean fans paid nearly $30 for tickets and filled the lower section of the Olympic ice arena, taking pictures with their smartphones and oohing and aahing and clapping as Ryom and Kim rehearsed their jumps and spins and lifts.
“I hope they will connect us together,” said Cho Da-in, 20, a student who also had a ticket to Wednesday’s short program. “We are one blood.”
While the North Korean skaters are under tight control, they are not being kept totally apart from outsiders, as are the country’s Olympic cheerleaders.
When South Korean spectators waved to Ryom and Kim after Tuesday’s practice, they waved back. And while a monitor dressed severely in black awaited them as they left the ice, the North Koreans then walked by themselves through an interview area. They even said a few cursory words to reporters: they were satisfied with practice and would speak more fully after the competition.
Around other skaters, Ryom and Kim have shown a playful side. Recently, in a waiting room before practice, the North Koreans and their coach rolled their gloves into a ball and played an impromptu game of soccer to get their bodies limber.
On Feb. 2, when Ryom celebrated her birthday, Kim Kyu-eun, a South Korean pairs skater, gave her some cosmetics as a gift. The North and South Koreans trained together last summer with Marcotte in Montreal, alongside pairs teams from Canada and the United States.
Kim Hyon Son, the North Koreans’ primary coach, prepared the staple kimchi for the South Koreans in Montreal. And Meagan Duhamel, a two-time world champion pairs skater and Marcotte’s wife, took the North Koreans shopping.
“Everyone is really supportive of them,” Alex Kam, the South Korean skating partner of Kim Kyu-eun, said Tuesday. “It’s good to see how sports brings everyone together without boundaries.”
