The 2018 Seoul Winter Olympics were a major propaganda success for North Korea. The Hermit Kingdom stole the spotlight from South Korea thanks to gullible Western media. Now, the countries are pursuing a joint Olympic bid, which should be rejected out of hand by the International Olympic Committee.
The IOC has already named Australia as its preferred host for the 2032 Summer Olympics. North and South Korea want to be back in consideration, with the Seoul city government saying that a joint Korean Peninsula games could be a “watershed moment” for peace. What’s more likely is that it would be a propaganda extravaganza for North Korea, and one only needs to look at 2018 to see why.
Western media outlets gushed over North Korea’s propaganda display in Seoul. Lester Holt, the NBC host who recently said that “fairness is overrated” and that it is dangerous to provide “an open platform for misinformation,” uncritically promoted a staged ski resort event by the North Korean government in the lead-up to the 2018 games. NBC Universal broadcasts the Olympics in the United States.
The sister of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un received fawning coverage from major media outlets. The New York Times said she had turned on the charm and “managed to outflank” Vice President Mike Pence “in the game of diplomatic image-making.” She no doubt had help from those such as the Washington Post’s Philip Bump, who touted the “deadly side-eye” she gave Pence. Every outlet from ABC to CNN to Reuters joined in on the praise for either her or North Korea’s delegation of propagandists.
This wasn’t just the usual case of media outlets embracing despicable tyrants to try and score points against then-President Donald Trump. Pulitzer Prize-winning television critic Tom Shales gushed in the Washington Post about how magnificent China’s opening ceremonies were in 2008. NBC News even said in 2014 that Vladimir Putin’s Russia “welcomes the world in dazzling opening ceremony.”
The opportunity to host the Olympics emboldens authoritarians. Putin invaded Ukraine not even a month after the closing ceremonies in 2014. Adolf Hitler was on shaky ground in Germany before the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. But the “Nazi Games” were the first real propaganda effort launched at the games, and historians note that it helped dull opposition to Hitler’s regime.
The IOC should move forward with Australia’s bid without considering the possibility of letting North Korea leech off the prestige of a joint event with South Korea. But the IOC should have stopped giving its events to China as well, and that hasn’t stopped it before.
