ABSTRACT
Thirty years after the 1988 Seoul Olympics, the 2018 Olympics was held in PyeongChang, South Korea. The host’s sport-for-peace initiative to promote and sustain peace on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia gained momentum with North Korea’s participation. In particular, a unified North-SouthKorean team was formed for the first time in Olympic history. Yet, in contrast to the wishes of the South Korean government and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which were both looking forward to fostering an atmosphere of peace and development in and through the Olympics, the South Korean public did not fully support North Korea’s participation in the PyeongChang Games and especially the decision to form a unified team. Through a critical reading of South Korean newspapers on the controversy over the joint ice hockey team at the PyeongChang Games, this chapter seeks to understand how Korea’s sport-for-peace initiative and related major notions and issues are discursively constructed through media coverage today, which could yield important and meaningful implications leading to the achievement of development and peace through the Olympics within the region and beyond.
