The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [105]
While South Korea and the International Olympics Committee were willing to offer a few events to Pyongyang, full cohosting of the games awarded to Seoul-1,030 sports contests in all-was never a serious possibility. Neither was a boycott of the games by the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies, which had boycotted the 1984 Los Angeles games and whose athletes and sports authorities were determined to participate this time.
Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze made it clear on a visit to Pyongyang in January 1986 that Soviet bloc athletes were not prepared to sit out another Olympics, no matter what Pyongyang's problems might be. In a confidential report on his visit, Shevardnadze wrote, "We have the impression that internally [North Koreans] have already come to terms with the unavoidable participation of the USSR and the other brother countries in the games." He added that North Korea had asked him emphatically to delay announcing Soviet participation for as long as possible, and to support the cohosting proposal. Moscow agreed to keep its planned participation in Seoul a secret and gave lip service to the cohosting idea. Nonetheless, Soviet Olympics officials took an active part in preparations for the games, attending the convention of national Olympic committees in Seoul in April 1986, although they requested that their presence be given as little publicity as possible.
Meanwhile, negotiations were under way between the two Koreas, under the auspices of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), on possible North Korean participation. South Korea initially agreed that preliminary contests for four events could be held in Pyongyang, while North Korea initially proposed a fifty-fifty split of all events and then demanded one-third of the events. Gradually Seoul improved its proposal, offering all table tennis and fencing events to Pyongyang. The IOC, under pressure from North Korea's allies, suggested transferring a few more events. South Korea accepted the compromises, but North Korea rejected them as insufficient.
In May 1987, in a cable to Berlin authorities after talks with "leading comrades" in Pyongyang, East German ambassador Hans Maretzki reported that in the view of North Korea, the issue was "a strategic political fight against the Seoul regime and its imperialistic supporters," with sports considerations given second priority or no priority at all. Maretzki reported that with its inflexible and impractical positions on Olympics issues, "North Korea is once again putting itself in self-imposed isolation. Through its stubborn behavior, North Korea is granting advantages to South Korea, which will enjoy an improved image."
According to Park Seh Jik, president of the Seoul Olympics Organizing Committee, he and IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch agreed to try to keep North Korea under control by dragging out the bargaining for as long as possible, even though they saw little hope for final agreement. In the end, they believed, North Korea would never agree to grant full access to tens of thousands of athletes, officials, and accompanying journalists from the West. But while the negotiations continued, it was difficult for North Korea to exert its maximum pressure against the participation of its communist allies in the games.
The talks came to a head in August 1987, when Pyongyang refused to accept a final IOC compromise proposal. On September 24, South Korea rejected a North Korean proposal for another direct North-South meeting on the issue. With this, in the view of the ROK Olympics chief, "North Korea was completely cornered.... Patience, mutual cooperation and careful planning by the IOC and South Korea for three years had finally succeeded in isolating North Korea. By the demonstration that the IOC and South Korea were doing their best to appease North Korea, the USSR and Eastern European countries were granted the option to participate freely in the Seoul Olympics."
THE BOMBING OF KAL FLIGHT 858
North Korea did not take its defeat lying down. Two weeks later,