N. Korean athletes stay guarded in build-up to Olympics

Only the teen figure skater Ryom Tae-ok, who turned 19 on Friday, offered her thoughts -- and rather briefly at that. Asked to describe how she felt to be in South Korea for her first Olympics, Ryom simply said, "I don't talk before competitions."

And she has lived up to her words.

Ryom and her pairs partner, Kim Ju-sik, had the entire ice at Gangneung Ice Area to themselves Friday during their first training session but evaded more than a dozen reporters camped out in the mixed zone and left without a word.

Then on Saturday, Kim did say briefly, "It was good," referring to his practice, before being ushered out of the mixed zone.

With a huge media throng clinging to every spoken word from the pairs team, it was their coach, Kim Hyon-son, who gets the mark for most spoken words by a member of the North Korean delegation here.

"I am pleased that we have been welcomed here," Kim said, as she and her team were leaving the practice area.

That they've agreed to compete in the first Winter Olympics hosted by South Korea has generated much interest and rightly so.

North Koreans have never participated in an Olympic Games in the South, and their presence is expected to help thaw the long-frozen inter-Korean relations.

And seeing North Korea at any Winter Olympics is a rarity in and of itself. North Korea didn't have any qualified athlete for the 2014 Sochi Winter Games, and won zero medals in 2006 and 2010.

The country has only one silver and one bronze all-time in its eight previous Winter Olympics appearances.

From North Korea, 12 women's ice hockey players arrived first on Jan. 25, and they have been training with 23 South Korean players on the historic joint team. They're based at Jincheon National Training Center in Jincheon, 90 kilometers south of Seoul, and are scheduled to move into Gangneung Olympic Village late Sunday, after playing Sweden in a tune-up game that evening in Incheon, just west of the capital city. Their practice sessions have been closed to the media.

Aside from the hockey team and the Ryom-Kim pair, North Korea has sent two short track speed skaters, three alpine skiers and three cross-country skiers.

The six skiers had yet to make an appearance as of Saturday morning. The two short trackers, Choe Un-song and Jong Kwang-bom, had their first practice Friday, but toward the end of the session, Choe fell and crashed hard into safety padding. He was treated for a laceration on his right ankle, and it wasn't immediately clear whether he'd be able to compete in the Olympics.

And neither his teammate Jong or coach Yun Chol spoke to the press on Friday about the severity of Choe's injury.

Following Saturday's practice, Yun was peppered with questions about Choe's status. The coach responded, "It's up to him to decide (whether he'll skate in the Olympics)."

Choe's main event is the 500 meters, and the heats for that distance are scheduled for Feb. 20.

In international sporting events, the silent treatment by North Korean athletes is par for the course. The last time North Korea came to the South for a multisport competition was the 2014 Incheon Asian Games, and for the most part, they were just as tight-lipped then as the athletes here are now.

So far in PyeongChang and Gangneung, the North Korean athletes have been chauffeured around in their own special buses, instead of the regular shuttles for all the other athletes. And the few words spoken by Ryom and Kim won't satisfy the curious types.

Athletes' biographies on the PyeongChang Olympics website offer only small bits of information. Beyond their height, weight and dates of birth, we do know that Ryom and Kim train 36 hours a week in Pyongyang. Ryom's hobbies are dancing, reading and listening to music, while Kim listed football as one of his hobbies.

But at least at the Incheon Asian Games, one athlete gave the public a glimpse into his personality, while using a press conference to express his love for his country.

Weightlifter Om Yun-chol, who won the men's 56-kilogram gold medal and broke his own world record in the process, credited North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for helping him, and memorably said, "If you're armed with ideology, you can break a rock with an egg."

It was a moment as confusing as it was refreshing. But keep in mind that this came at a press conference for medalists. North Korean athletes aren't favored to win medals at PyeongChang 2018 -- though you wouldn't know it by the way they've attracted media attention in the build-up.

With next Friday's opening ceremony fast approaching, PyeongChang 2018 is badly in need of some publicity boost. Its top organizer, Lee Hee-beom, admitted on Thursday that ticket sales could use some last-minute push. Lee said just under 75 percent of the tickets had been sold as of Wednesday.

It remains to be seen whether the media's fascination with the North Korean athletes will be matched by that of the public. The South Korean government, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and PyeongChang's organizers have hailed North Korea's participation as a step in the direction toward peace. But some have derisively called these the "Pyongyang Olympics," for the way North Korea has stolen PyeongChang's thunder. Others have voiced concerns that Seoul has been duped by Pyongyang's charm offensive and that North Korea, once the Olympic Games are over, will revert to its missile-launching, nuclear-testing ways.

As the media frenzy goes, this is only the beginning. It could reach another level when the women's joint hockey finally arrives in Gangneung late Sunday.

The Korean team's first game is next Saturday.