North Korea’s presence felt at Tokyo Olympic Games, even in absence
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Kim Jong Un may use the North’s absence from the Tokyo Games as a way to signal to his people that he values protecting them from the coronavirus — in rival Japan, no less — more than the possible glory his athletes could have enjoyed.
“North Korea excels in propaganda at international sport events,” said Sung-Yoon Lee, a Korean studies professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University in Massachusetts.
So it was likely a tough decision for North Korea not to attend the Tokyo Games, “which it could have dominated in the propaganda field by sending a few athletes, cheerleaders, and First Sister Kim Yo Jong,” Lee said, referring to the leader’s sister, Kim Yo Jong.
Missing a chance to score propaganda points “reflects some serious Covid paranoia,” Joshua Pollack, a North Korea expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, said of the North’s decision not to attend. The country clearly isn’t ready for the delta variant, he says, “and the Olympic village seems like a great way to bring it home.”