North Korean shuttlers may be invited to play down south

North Korean badminton players may be invited to South Korea’s 99th Annual National Sports Festival, which will take place in Iksan, North Jeolla Province, this coming October.

Over the past few months, politicians and National Sports Festival (NSF) organizers have been pushing to have an invitation to a North Korean contingent included in the agenda for the North-South sport summit, scheduled for June 18th in Panmunjeom.  Iksan Mayor Jung Hun-yul and North Jeolla Governor Song Ha-jin – both of whom were re-elected in Korean regional elections on June 13th – have expressed their support for the move and petitions have been made both to the South Korean Olympic Committee and to the national legislative assembly.

Mayor Jung first announced his intention in April, before the first summit between leaders Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un.  Earlier this week, it was reported that the plan was to invite teams possibly in badminton, table tennis, football, basketball, and volleyball, along with cheering squads.  The main objectives at the June 18th summit are to plan for a North-South friendly match in basketball and for a unified North-South team entry in the opening ceremonies of the Jakarta-Palembang Asian Games this summer.

The NSF is an annual multi-sport event that comprises pro, university, and high school divisions and features both Asian Games and Olympic sports.  For Republic of Korea badminton players, it is the one domestic event that everyone who’s healthy, including all national team members, participate in without fail.  North Korean badminton players have been seen periodically in international competitions, most recently at the 2008 Asian Juniors and the 2011 Russian Open.  But they have not played in the southern part of the peninsula in any of the 26 editions of the Korea Open, nor in the 22 other international events hosted in Korea – including 5 multi-sport competitions – beginning with the 1986 Seoul Asian Games.