They’re hidden from the world by a brutal regime. In Paris, they’re swapping pins

At every Olympics, swapping national “pins” becomes the universal language at the athletes’ village. This year, there’s one pin everyone wants, and it’s less to do with the dull pin itself than the demure, skittish athletes handing it out.

North Korea, the mysterious hermit kingdom that locks its citizens away from the rest of the world, has sent 14 athletes to the Games. They are staying in the village and to everyone’s surprise, they have been allowed pin-related mingling with other athletes.

South Korean table tennis players, wearing blue, take a so-called victory selfie on the podium with a team from North Korea.Credit: AP

The pin’s design is flag-heavy and humourless, unlike the smiling bubble tea from Chinese Taipei or the golden coffee cup from Colombia. But any outside contact for these athletes, even under eagle-eyed supervision, is a brow-raising concession from North Korea.

“I know this pin could be better but the aura coming off it?” a Dominican swimmer said on social media. “I tried to talk to them, but they didn’t know a lot of English so they just pointed at a pin of mine they wanted, and we traded. I would’ve given any pin for this.”

Australian tennis player Daria Saville posted this image of the North Korean team pin on Instagram.Credit: Daria Saville / @daria_sav

There’s been no softening of North Korea’s hostility to most of the outside world. Tensions with its southern neighbour have not waned, either.

A few months ago, the north (officially the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or DPRK) was sending hundreds of large balloons containing defaced Hello Kitty clothing and human waste parasites over the border.

And yet in Paris, North Korea is using the Olympics to try to show a friendlier face to the world.

Athletes waved from their boat in the opening ceremony and have been speaking to foreign athletes, although an athlete who had an interaction with a DPRK competitor told this masthead the woman had to check with what appeared to be a chaperone before answering a question.

Bronze medal-winning DPRK table tennis players posed for what’s become known as a victory selfie on the podium (allowed for the first time these Games) with their silver-winning counterparts from South Korea.

At the wrestling on Monday, a group of team officials cheered their weightlifters from packed media stands. As gymnast Simone Biles won her third gold of the games, DPRK’s smiling An Chang-ok waved for the cameras and hugged at least one fellow finalist.

She, too, had been swapping pins; her lanyard had a badge with Chinese, Czech and Irish flags on it.

North Korea’s history at the Olympics dates back to 1964, although it attends other competitions so rarely that competitors don’t know what to expect from a DPRK team. It boycotted the 1984 Games in Los Angeles with the rest of the communist bloc, and the 1988 ones in Seoul. It skipped Tokyo, too, due to COVID fears.

For a tiny, isolated country, it has done well. Before Paris, it had won 54 medals including 16 golds, which puts it ahead of countries such as rich Monaco and more populous nations like Nepal and Bangladesh, which have never won any. So far, it has won three medals at these Games, and has a shot at more.

They’re strong in wrestling, boxing, diving, gymnastics and table tennis. However, their weightlifters could not compete because they failed to attend a qualifying event last year.

North Korean officials watch their athletes wrestle this week in Paris.Credit: Jordan Baker

Its image-conscious leaders use the Olympics to counter the prevailing view that North Korea is an extreme totalitarian state, which allows its citizens no freedom, has gulags and re-education camps for dissidents, and invests in nuclear weapons while people starve.

There’s no domestic propaganda value; the Games are not being televised in North Korea, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported.

Daria Saville posted this image of North Korea’s quarters in the village.Credit: Daria Saville / @daria_sav

At the 2000 Sydney Games and again at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics in 2018, the two Koreas were allowed to march together. They’ve even fielded joint teams. A selfie in Rio – like the one in Paris – hit the headlines, too.

“ I think that Kim Jong-un is also using the Games to indicate that he has no problem with the South Korean or American people, but rather with the two governments,” said Ramon Pacheco Pardo, Professor of International Relations at King’s College London.

The sport diplomacy comes with a risk, however. Athletes competing for totalitarian regimes have for decades used a rare trip outside their country to defect, the most recent being a Belarusian sprinter who sought refuge at the Polish embassy in Tokyo.

There were regular defections during the era of the Soviet Bloc. In Melbourne, in 1956, the Hungarians arrived to news that the Russians had brutally quelled an uprising in their country. A water polo match between Russia and Hungry became known as the “blood in the water” episode, after a Hungarian player was hit by a Russian and left the pool with blood streaming from his head.

The iconic selfie of South Korea gymnast Lee Eun-ju and her North Korean rival Hong Un-jong from Rio 2016.Credit:

Dozens of Hungarian athletes defected, mostly to the United States.

“North Korea will make sure that no athlete or official is left alone, to avoid defections,” said Pacheco Pardo.

“And North Korea also has a concentration camp system that means that anyone thinking about defecting will know that their family will be punished. Thus why North Korea has generally been able to avoid defections by athletes, in contrast to other poor communist countries such as Cuba.”

As they interact with Australians and Americans and South Koreans, they’ll get a glimpse of life in the free world. They’ll go back to total control, but as athletes – particularly if they’re successful – their lives will not be as desperate as some of their countrymen.

“North Korean athletes and officials are among the country’s elite, allowed to live in Pyongyang,” said Pacheco Pardo.

“Thus, they know that Paris and other cities and countries overseas where they normally compete are more developed than their own. So they will be able to see that their country is less developed and not as free with their own eyes, but they won’t necessarily be surprised.”

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