Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon has announced that the city will pursue a bid for the 2036 Summer Olympics without the involvement of the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.
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Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon has announced that the city will pursue a bid for the Olympic Games 2036 without the involvement of the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. In 2021, Seoul had proposed a joint bid with Pyongyang to host the 2032 Olympics, but the bid failed due to unpredictable inter-Korean relations. The proposal for a joint bid had aimed to build on the momentum of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in 2018, where athletes from both North and South Korea marched together under a unified flag and fielded a joint women’s ice hockey team. At the time, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had welcomed the joint bid as a historic initiative.
However, relations between the two Koreas have since deteriorated, with North Korea conducting a record number of ballistic missile tests in the past year. According to the officials in Washington, North Korea might be preparing to resume nuclear weapons testing for the first time since 2017. Mayor Oh Se-hoon believes that the joint bid for the 2032 Olympics was doomed to fail due to the unpredictable nature of inter-Korean relations. Instead, Seoul will pursue a bid for the Olympic Games 2036 without the involvement of Pyongyang. However, the mayor has stated that if relations improve, Seoul would remain open to holding some events in the Demilitarized Zone or in Pyongyang.
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The Korean Sport and Olympic Committee (KSOC) has not received any formal statements of intent from Seoul or the southern city of Busan regarding a bid for the Olympic Games 2036. The decision on whether to jointly host the event with Pyongyang would be up to the individual cities in consultation with the national government. Qatar, India, Germany, and Egypt are reportedly considering bids for the Olympic Games 2036, with Mexico also having thrown its hat into the ring. Qatar, in particular, is expected to make a strong push for the event following its successful hosting of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
The decision by Seoul to pursue a bid for the Olympic Games 2036 without Pyongyang comes as no surprise given the tense relations between North and South Korea. The two countries remain technically at war since the Korean War ended in a ceasefire in 1953, and relations have been strained in recent years due to North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
