The IOC is annoyed at the country for skipping the Tokyo Games.
North Korea has been tossed from the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics because the country did not send a team to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and that has angered the International Olympic Committee. It probably has angered Thomas Bach who is the President of the International Olympic Committee and is not as important as he would have you believe. Bach somehow thought that he and the IOC were somehow responsible for the possibility of North Korea and South Korea finding some common ground to improve the relationship between the two countries in 2018. The two Koreas did have combined efforts in the 2018 South Korea Winter Olympics. Bach needs to be reminded that Dennis Rodman was also invited to North Korea and the former National Basketball Association player did not help end the United States-North Korea War which started in 1950 and technically is still going on as there was only a truce in 1953 to stop the fighting. Rodman did not get a Peace in Our Time deal from North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong- Un but they did hang out and watch basketball together.
The International Olympic Committee is not all that powerful although IOC leaders believe the group is important. The International Olympic Committee thinks and acts as if it is a sovereign nation complete with a flag and official permanent observer status at the United Nations. The IOC put an Olympics in Beijing in 2008 and in Sochi in 2014 despite protests from human rights organizations about China and Russia’s policies. The IOC and its partners are facing a backlash from human rights organizations about placing the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. Politicians are calling for a boycott of the 2022 Beijing Games. Bach never addressed North Korea’s human rights issue but neither did Dennis Rodman. The Games Must Go On.
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President of the International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach. (Toru Hanai/Pool Photo via AP)
