Taekwondo demonstration teams from Koreas to meet south of border

On Saturday, Voice of America reported that the ITF had accepted an invitation extended by the WTF earlier this month.

The WTF is the official world governing organization of taekwondo as sanctioned by the International Olympic Committee. The ITF, based in Vienna, is recognized by the North Korean government.

According to the WTF, the ITF's delegation of 34 will arrive in Seoul, via Beijing, on June 23, and they will depart South Korea on July 1.

This year's world championships are expected to be the largest ever, with some 2,000 athletes and officials from 170 or so countries. IOC President Thomas Bach is expected to attend the closing ceremony on June 30.

ITF's spokesman George Vitale told Yonhap News Agency that he and five other non-North Korean ITF officials will accompany the demonstration team.

The team will have North Korean athletes and also those from foreign countries that have not been determined, according to Vitale.

The WTF's South Korean President Choue Chung-won met with ITF's North Korean head Ri Yong-sun and Chang Ung, an honorary president of the ITF and the lone North Korean IOC member, in Lausanne, Switzerland, on May 3 to discuss inter-Korean exchanges of taekwondo demonstration teams.

In August 2014, Choue and Chang, then the ITF president, signed a landmark agreement that covered such exchanges. The deal will also allow North Korean athletes not registered with the WTF to still compete at WTF events under that organization's set of rules.

The following May, a 22-member ITF demonstration team performed at the opening ceremony of the 2015 world championships in Chelyabinsk, Russia. It later had a joint performance with a team from the WTF.

The ITF squad at the time included North Koreans, along with two Russians and two Czechs. It was the first ITF demonstration team to appear at a WTF competition of any kind.

The upcoming ITF visit will be its first to South Korea since April 2007. Chang led the demonstration team at the time, and they stayed south of the border for four days.

Now that the ITF has agreed to visit South Korea, the WTF may then seek to pay a reciprocal visit north of the border when the ITF holds its own world championships in Pyongyang in September.

This year's ITF team is also scheduled to perform in Jeonju, also in North Jeolla Province, and in Seoul during its stay.

Virtually all inter-Korean exchanges have been put on hold in recent years under lingering tensions on the peninsula, but athletes from either side have made cross-border trips for competitions this year.

The South Korean women's football team went to Pyongyang for the Asian Football Confederation Women's Asian Cup qualifying matches last month. Around the same time, the North Korean women's hockey team came to Gangneung, Gangwon Province, for the International Ice Hockey Federation Women's World Championship Division II Group A.

The North's recent missile launches notwithstanding, new South Korean President Moon Jae-in is expected to adopt a more conciliatory approach toward North Korea than his conservative predecessors. (Yonhap)