Californian Chloe Kim made history at this year’s Olympics. She pushed the boundaries of the women’s halfpipe by pulling off back to back 1080s, and she pulled off a near perfect score of 98.25. Even if you couldn’t care less about snowboarding, there’s something about Kim that’s totally inspiring. At just 17 years old, she performs at an extremely high standard without any of Shaun White’s frustrating cockiness, and even has the poise to make jokes on Twitter right before competing. She’s also the daughter of South Korean immigrants, and this year’s Olympics in Pyeongchang was the first time her grandmother got to see her compete.
Although Kim is not the only second generation athlete to compete, her performance made me think about all the lost potential talent the United States has had with the recent attacks on immigration. I also couldn’t help but putting her success into context with the United States’ involvement in the Korean peninsula over the last century, and especially now with declining relations with North Korea.
At the Olympics, North and South Korea marched under the same flag, a gesture that isn’t groundbreaking, but came at a crucial moment of increased pressure between the two countries. With relations with North Korea scarily shakey (I’m thinking about Little Rocket Man tweets), we are looking at the possibility of nuclear war. Due to the Trump administration’s inability to engage in international diplomacy, South Korea has felt the pressure to smooth relations more than ever before.
The current South Korean President, Moon Jae-in, is much more open to negotiations with North Korea than the former South Korean administration. The former president, Park Guen-hye, was South Korea’s first female president, and narrowly beat the more liberal Moon in the 2012 election. However, in 2017, she was impeached as it became clear that the National Intelligence Service had influenced the election by starting an illicit campaign to sway voters to vote more conservatively in a way eerily similar to the way Russia influenced the 2016 U.S. election as reported by The Guardian. The more liberal Moon has made marching under one Korean flag possible during the Olympics, but the conflict between the two countries is far from settled.
The division of the Korean peninsula into two countires occurred after WWII. At the time, Korea was a colony of Japan, and as the Axis powers fell, Korea became a casualty of the Cold War and was split into communist and capitalist spheres of influence. The United States directly supported the South, and that support shined through during the Korean War (1950-53). Since then, South Korea has become one of the richest countries in the world, while North Korea has been led by three generations of strict dictatorship.
It’s important to confront the reasons behind the way different countries interact with each other. Many Americans don’t take North Korea seriously, with movies like “The Interview” taking an extremely light hearted stance on the issue. We also don’t take the time to think about why North Korea is the way it is and how our past policies have made North Korea into the dictatorship it is today. An arbitrary line has split Korea, and the US played a strong role in that. Watching Koreans march under a unified flag made me think about the unnecessary split that has pained the peninsula, but also gave me hope for a more peaceful future.