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S.Korea has 2020 vision to co-host with North
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-11-15 15:50
PUSAN, South Korea, Nov 15 (Reuters) - South Korea's second-largest city,
Pusan, wants to co-host the Summer Olympics in 2020 with the North Korean
capital, Pyongyang, the southern city's mayor said on Tuesday.
North Korea and South Korea's athletes enter
the field holding hands and waving an unification flag during the opening
ceremony of the 4th East Asian Games in Macau October 29, 2005.
[Reuters] | The South Korean capital, Seoul, held
the Summer Games in 1988 but Pyongyang's last-ditch attempt to co-host some of
the events came to nothing and North Korea eventually boycotted those Olympics.
However, senior sports officials from both nations agreed on November 1 to
compete as a single team for the first time at the 2006 Asian Games in Doha and
then at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing -- a move with huge political as well as
sporting significance.
Although still far from smooth, relations across the heavily-fortified
Demilitarised Zone frontier have improved considerably since the Seoul Games.
"In principle, as the mayor, I have a passion and the opinion to co-host,
North and South, the Summer Olympics in 2020," Pusan mayor Hur Nam-sik told a
news conference through an interpreter.
"But this has to be on the condition there is progress in North-South Korean
relations," he said.
He added that he had yet to discuss the idea with the North.
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