(Bloomberg) -- The International Olympic Committee will support North Korea's participation in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, IOC President Thomas Bach told Kyodo News in an interview.
“We will take the same approach in every respect with regard to Tokyo 2020 as we took with Pyeongchang 2018...We have always applied strict political neutrality, and then the same we will do for Tokyo 2020,” Bach was quoted as saying by the Japanese news agency.
The sight of the divided Koreas playing together has been one of the highlights of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea. A unified Korean team of ice hockey players played against Japan, a former colonial ruler, this week, although they lost 4-1. Many people in both Koreas harbor mutual resentment toward Japan for colonizing their peninsula for 35 years until Japan's defeat in World War II.
Bach said he's planning to make a trip to North Korea at the invitation of the country's National Olympic Committee, at a “mutually convenient date,” the news agency reported.
“We hope that we can continue to assist athletes from DPRK to prepare and then qualify for the Olympic Games in Tokyo,” Bach was quoted as saying.
To contact the reporter on this story: Masumi Suga in Tokyo at msuga@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Stanley James at sjames8@bloomberg.net, Reed Stevenson, Henry Hoenig
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