Sports-heritage diplomacy and inter-Korean relations: possibilities and challenges

ABSTRACT

This critical commentary explores the idea of sports heritage in the relations between South and North Korea. Relying on a theoretical basis where ‘heritage diplomacy’ and ‘transnational memory’ intersect, the discussion focuses on the possibilities and challenges of sports heritage. The paper identifies two themes in this context – sports heroes and marathon racing – and demonstrates why these are potentially promising in maintaining a productive dialogue and alleviating tensions on the Peninsula by negotiating and reproducing transnational memories. Sports heritage as diplomacy can manifest in jointly established and run sports museums, joint sports-themed commemoration/anniversary days and joint sports-history books. Conditions on the Peninsula dictate that the challenges facing this complicated task are creating a favourable environment for engagement, and issues related to, first, the pre-division origins of athletes and their post-colonial activities; second, acknowledgements of the sister-rival’s post-colonial success; and third, indications that a tension exists in South Korea between changing notions of national identity on the popular level and the idea of a single Korean nation advanced on the governmental level. It will be an interesting experiment in writing history and in creating collective memory. The paper contributes a fresh angle on inter-Korean relations. It also provides a case study to the emerging literature on heritage diplomacy and highlights the place of sports in this scholarship. Finally, it is suggested that the theoretical approach which investigates ‘heritage diplomacy’ with the notion of ‘transnational memory’ in mind is useful in examining the role of heritages in inter-state interactions.

KEYWORDS:

• Heritage diplomacy
• sports heritage
• transnational memory
• South Korea
• North Korea

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Unfortunately, it is impossible to collect similarly extensive data about views of the North Korean public.

2. Chosŏn (1392–1910) was Korea’s last dynasty and later the Korean name for the colony.

3. Tensions between South Korea and Japan often arise around issues such as forced sexual slavery of Korean women and the forced labour of Korean workers during the Pacific War, Japanese history textbooks, the question of Japanese apology, the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo where several Japanese war criminals are honoured, and Japanese claims over Dokdo, a group of islets in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) that are administered by South Korea. Opinion polls consistently reveal that historical issues have the greatest impact on the negative impressions that South Koreans hold of Japan. These polls also indicate that resolving the historical disputes is seen by South Koreans as the most important condition for improving relations (see e.g. The Genron NPO 2019).