S. Korean delegation to travel to IOC meeting Thursday

SEOUL, Jan. 17 (Yonhap) -- The South Korean delegation to an International Olympic Committee (IOC) meeting on North Korea's Olympic participation will travel to Switzerland on Thursday.

IOC President Thomas Bach will chair a four-party meeting Saturday at the IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, to discuss the North's presence at the Feb. 9-25 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, the first Winter Games to take place in South Korea.

The IOC earlier said the meeting will involve representatives from PyeongChang's organizing committee and the two national Olympic bodies, plus high-ranking government officials and IOC members from the two countries.

The South Korean delegation is made up of Do Jong-hwan, sports minister; Lee Hee-beom, head of PyeongChang's Olympic organizing committee; Lee Kee-heung, president of the Korean Sport & Olympic Committee; and Ryu Seung-min, an IOC member.

They will gather for a prep meeting in Lausanne on Friday. The real meeting on the following day will begin at 9:30 a.m. (local time), or 5:30 p.m. Saturday in Seoul.

Kim Il-guk, North Korea's sports minister and head of its national Olympic committee, has already landed in Beijing on his way to Lausanne. Chang Ung, the North's lone IOC member, is scheduled to head to Switzerland on Thursday.

During high-level inter-Korean talks on Jan. 9, North Korea agreed to send an athletic delegation to PyeongChang. The two Koreas are holding a working-level meeting Wednesday to further discuss that issue and others, including a joint march at the opening ceremony and forming a single Korean team in women's hockey.

The last time the Koreas had paraded in under one flag at an Olympics was at the 2006 Winter Games in Torino, Italy.

The proposal for the unified hockey team, made by South Korea during the Jan. 9 meeting, wasn't revealed until last Friday. The government here is seeking to add a few extra North Korean players without cutting any of the current South Koreans.

There has never been a single Korean team in any sport at any Olympics. The Koreas competed as one nation at the 1991 World Table Tennis Championships and the 1991 FIFA World Youth Championship.

The IOC earlier said its meeting "will have to take a series of essential decisions," including the size of the North Korean athletic delegation, the format of North Korea's participation and issues related to the official protocol, such as flag, anthem and uniform.

Do, the South Korean sports minister, said the "Korean Unification" flag will be raised at the opening ceremony if the Koreas agree to march in together.

The Koreas remain technically at war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty.

jeeho@yna.co.kr
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