SEOUL – After some two years of rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula, the reprieve, however brief, that the upcoming Winter Olympics in the South Korean city of  PyeongChang promises to bring is more than welcome. But, with some military experts estimating that the probability of war now surpasses 50%, complacency is not an option.

After years of accelerated missile development, which culminated in successful tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles and, allegedly, a hydrogen bomb last year, North Korea’s nuclear program has become an imminent threat not only to its neighbors, but also to the United States. The response of US President Donald Trump’s administration – which has included unprecedented saber-rattling on Twitter – has escalated tensions further.

Yet, on January 1, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called for better relations with the South, before agreeing to participate in the Olympics. What accounts for Kim’s sudden extension of an olive branch to South Korea?

Since coming to power in 2011, Kim has been committed to a policy called the “Byungjin line,” which emphasizes parallel goals: economic development and a robust nuclear weapons program. With one of those goals now ostensibly achieved, Kim has shifted his focus to securing new economic opportunities for North Korea’s sanction-battered economy. For example, the sanctions imposed in September 2017 on textiles, coal, and other exports are said to have reduced North Korean exports by 90%. According to South Korea’s central bank, North Korea’s economy grew by 3.9% in 2016, but may have contracted in 2017.

Kim now seems to have decided that his best hope for boosting North Korea’s economy, without reversing progress on its nuclear program, is to weaken the international coalition enforcing the sanctions. His campaign begins with South Korea, where he is attempting to use ethnic nationalism to drive a wedge between that country and its US ally and potentially even to convince it to abandon the alliance altogether. In the longer term, Kim appears to hope that he can convince the international community that it can co-exist with a nuclear North Korea, much as Pakistan did.

But South Korea is unlikely to be fooled so easily. Since his inauguration last May, President Moon Jae-in has known that he needed to find a way to mitigate the existential threat of nuclear war. So he decided to treat the Winter Olympics as an opportunity not only to defuse tensions on the Korean Peninsula, but also to spur momentum for dialogue on denuclearization.

While the possibility that South Koreans may be drawn into North Korea’s honey trap cannot be ruled out, most Koreans, including young people, have had their fill of the North’s provocations, and are highly unlikely to be seduced by Kim’s charm offensive. Moon himself made it clear last month that no improvement in the South’s relationship with North Korea will be possible without denuclearization. Indeed, his efforts to open a dialogue with the North seem to be driven by cool diplomatic realism, not naïve idealism.

As for the US, its take on the intra-Korea dialogue reflects a mixture of skepticism and expectation. Trump has expressed support for the effort, but Americans remain concerned about any potential strain on their country’s alliance with South Korea.

More dangerous, some US policymakers continue to entertain the possibility of delivering a “bloody nose” strike to the North – a decision that could cost hundreds of thousands of lives. After all, there is no guarantee that North Korea would be able to discern whether it really is a one-time strike, or a declaration of war. And even if the North could read the Trump administration’s intentions, there is no telling how it would respond.

To help prevent this outcome, and with Kim refusing to discuss denuclearization with his “brethren” in the South (at whom he claims his missiles are not aimed), Moon now must figure out how to build up the intra-Korea dialogue to enable talks between North Korea and the US. To this end, a quiet meeting between the second-highest officials of the two countries – US Vice President Mike Pence and President of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly of North Korea Kim Yong-nam, both of whom are expected to come to Pyeongchang – might be possible.

But, ultimately, it is Trump who needs to seize the opportunity to initiate talks. The fact is that, despite their importance, sanctions alone cannot bring about the outcome desired by the US or its allies. Talks are needed, if only to try to find out the North’s true intentions: is its nuclear program a defensive or offensive project? For that, the Trump administration will need to move beyond the “maximum pressure” promised by its stated North Korea policy, and get started on the “engagement” that it also acknowledges will be indispensable to forging a solution.

MADRID – Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games, famously said, “The most important thing is not to win, but to take part.” Now that North Korea has agreed to participate in the upcoming Winter Olympics in the South Korean city of Pyeongchang, that phrase has taken on new meaning.

Throughout the history of the modern Olympic Games, separating politics from sports has been impossible. Perhaps it is not even desirable. After all, one of the Games’ primary objectives is to put sports at the service of peace and human dignity.

More broadly, sports have long played a politically constructive role on the world stage. At the 1971 World Table Tennis Championships in Japan, an American player hitched a ride on the Chinese team’s bus, inaugurating what became known as “ping-pong diplomacy.” Soon after, at the height of the Cultural Revolution no less, Mao Zedong invited the US table tennis team to China, paving the way for US President Richard Nixon’s historic visit there in 1972.

At the 1991 World Table Tennis Championships, again hosted by Japan, North and South Korea formed a joint team, and beat the odds to win a gold medal in the women’s competition. The camaraderie developed by the players helped them defeat the Chinese team in the final. For a brief moment, jubilant Koreans forgot their divisions.

In fact, South Korea may even owe its modern democracy, at least in part, to the Olympic Games. In 1987, with the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics quickly approaching, South Koreans succeeded in pushing then-President Chun Doo-hwan’s military regime to hold a democratic election. This was a striking turn of events, given that Chun had conceived the Olympic bid as an opportunity to improve his dictatorship’s domestic and foreign image. Without the approaching Games, and the international pressure that they brought, South Korea’s democratic transition might not have taken place, at least not as peacefully or rapidly as it did.

But the 1988 Seoul Games also had a dark side. North Korea, unable to reach an agreement with the South about how to share the event, ended up boycotting it altogether. And in 1987, the same year the Chun dictatorship collapsed, a Korean Air flight was downed, most likely by the North Korean regime, in an effort to disrupt the approaching election and discourage other countries from participating in the Games.

In the end, the 1988 Games deepened the divide between the two Koreas, and the brief moment of shared triumph in 1991 would not be enough to reverse the trend. The South went on to open itself to the world, and the North hardened its isolationism – a process that intensified after the dissolution of the Soviet Union – and pursued the path of nuclear proliferation.

Of course, North Korea’s decision to stage a boycott in 1988 was hardly unprecedented. Historically, many countries have boycotted the Games, or even used them as a platform to promote values contrary to the Olympic spirit. That was certainly the case when Adolf Hitler’s regime hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.

In 1945, George Orwell looked back at the 1936 Games and observed that, “serious sport … is war minus the shooting.” The Games, he noted, are “bound up with the rise of nationalism – that is, with the lunatic modern habit of identifying oneself with large power units and seeing everything in terms of competitive prestige.”

Orwell wasn’t far off. At the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, for example, the connection between sports and nationalism was on display. The Games were an organizational success, complete with brilliant new architecture. The fact that China ended up winning more gold medals than any other country undoubtedly heightened national pride. And the protests against China’s treatment of Tibet during Olympic torch relays around the world fueled Chinese nationalism. Today, national pride is still a key focus for the political leader who supervised the Beijing Games: then-vice president and now-president of China, Xi Jinping.

Similarly, the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi helped to breathe life into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s then-ailing regime. Three days before the closing ceremony, Putin launched his military intervention into Crimea.

Now the Games are returning to the turbulent Korean Peninsula, where the two Koreas remain formally at war 65 years after agreeing to an armistice. Before the North’s recent decision to participate in the PyeongChang Games, many were understandably worried about a repeat of 1988, or that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un would use the occasion to put on one of his military shows of force. That is, after all, what happened at the 2002 World Cup, co-hosted by South Korea and Japan. Toward the end of the tournament, which was marked by an extraordinary performance by the South Korean national team, North Korea started a naval battle with the South.

Fortunately, South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s thoughtful, conciliatory attitude, which Kim seemed to reciprocate in his New Year’s address, has created a slight thaw. The South’s efforts to ease tensions by postponing joint military exercises with the United States, like the North’s decision to participate in the Games, should be welcomed. And, indeed, since then, there has been a steady stream of good news: the two countries will march together at the opening ceremony, and will even form a combined women’s hockey team.

To be sure, one must always question the Kim regime’s motives. In the past, the North’s friendly gestures have not led to meaningful concessions or progress toward peace. Given that the two Koreas marched together in three Olympic Games since 2000, prudence is advisable. But we should resist the urge to succumb to fatalism, and instead remain supportive of North Korea’s overtures.

The North Korean nuclear threat cannot be managed without negotiations. To that end, the PyeongChang Games, coming just 30 years after the Seoul Games, may represent the best chance in years to get the process started. Let us hope that the North Korean athletes’ journey from Pyongyang to PyeongChang bears diplomatic fruit, and that “the Peace Games,” as Moon calls them, will be remembered more for the North’s presence than for the final medal count.

SEOUL – South Korean President Moon Jae-in has made a good start to the New Year. Not only did he broker an agreement to bring North Korea to the Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang; he also convinced US President Donald Trump that doing so was in fact Trump’s idea.

With his Olympic coup, Moon has both managed the North Korean threat to the Games and avoided any backlash from the United States. Still, the agreement that North and South Korea reached in the border village of Panmunjom earlier this month is unlikely to lead to renewed nuclear-disarmament talks.

Rather, once the Games are over, the North will likely use the current diplomatic opening to probe in other areas unrelated to its nuclear program, which, in turn, will raise a set of trying and familiar issues for the US-South Korea relationship.

After all, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un certainly wasn’t motivated by a genuine New Year’s resolution when he called for better relations with South Korea on January 1. On the contrary, his gambit was in keeping with the North’s longstanding policy of trying to weaken the US-South Korean alliance.

In reaching out to the South, Kim wants to demonstrate that the North can live peacefully with its neighbors, even as it maintains a nuclear arsenal. More broadly, Kim is seeking to normalize the North’s status as a wannabe, self-identified nuclear power in the eyes of the world.

Achieving these goals, Kim hopes, will drive a wedge between the US and South Korea. He knows that Trump’s approval ratings in South Korea are far lower than his already-abysmal ratings in the US, so he is exploiting that fact to facilitate his nuclear-normalization objective. And, of course, the North is always looking for opportunities to win relief from sanctions.

Moon, for his part, has handled Kim’s “peace offensive” well. North Korea’s Olympians and cheerleaders will undoubtedly be greeted enthusiastically when they arrive by train in the South, and the crowd will roar its approval when athletes from the two countries march into the stadium under the same banner.

To be sure, the North Koreans will think they were invited to participate in the Games not in spite of their nuclear program, but because of it. From their perspective, South Korea seems to have developed a newfound respect – or fear – of what the North is becoming. And participation in the Olympics suggests that international isolation is a temporary fact of life, a toll on the road to fully recognized nuclear status. They might think that, soon enough, other countries will be lining up to offer the North a seat at the diplomatic table.

But Moon has made it clear that his government will not be seduced by the Olympic spirit. If North Korea’s leaders expect participation in the Games to lead to recognition of their country’s nuclear status, they will be waiting a long time. The South’s goal is to host a successful Olympic Games, after a year in which many countries questioned whether it was safe to send a delegation at all. Once the Games are over, the North will be facing a long winter of opprobrium and isolation.

That means the North would be wrong to assume that the South will beg it to reopen the Kaesong Industrial Complex, one of the most ambitious North-South cooperative efforts of the 2003-2009 détente era. Moon has shown no interest in such gestures. He understands that unilateral concessions will not improve South Korea’s position vis-à-vis the other regional and global powers reacting to North Korean behavior.

Like the Saudis and others before him, Moon knows that the way to Trump’s heart is through his ego. But he also must manage the broader front of countries that are participating in historically strong sanctions against an abhorrent state. In that respect, Moon’s first big test will come immediately after the Olympics, when the South Korea-US Combined Forces Command will decide on its plans for future military exercises.

North Korea, of course, will object to such exercises, as it always does. But so, too, might China and Russia, which will accuse the US of reversing the Olympic thaw. Even so, a military alliance without exercises is like an orchestra without instruments. Moon most likely understands this, just as he realizes that the importance of his country’s relationship with the US, despite its headaches and complexities, dwarfs that of any of its other partnerships around the world.

At the end of the day, a progressive South Korean government such as Moon’s always must demonstrate to the public that it can manage and safeguard the US relationship. So far, Moon has done that.