North Korea Has Threatened To Boycott The Winter Olympics. But Why?

There might be an odd day or two that could be dubbed as blessed in man’s version of hell, but there just can’t be a single day or normality in North Korea. Not even a full week had passed since North Korea and South Korea came in for a dialogue regarding the former’s participation in the Winter Olympics at South Korea and now, it seems, Kim Jong-Un’s nation has threatened to boycott from participating in the games altogether.

The reason behind North Korea’s decision to pull a wedge in between its relations with South Korea is kind of a shocker. Since South Korea is a close ally of the United States which the Kim Jong Un-state dubs its protector, one reckons it is this closeness between the two countries that hasn’t sat all that well with Kim Jong Un. So, obviously, North Korea wants Seoul to distance itself from Washington D.C., which, truth be told, doesn’t seem to be happening anywhere in the recent future.

Given this disarray, Pyongyang has called the liberal South Korean government, “a group of pro-US traitors who are keen at observing their masters’ power even at the cost of the Winter Olympics.” That’s not all. North Korea also fears that both United States and South Korea may ally together and go far out in their bid to see a denuclearized Korean peninsula. This, if it were to happen, would deal a direct blow to Kim Jong Un’s nuclear ambitions, a glimpse of which the world has seen through regular banter and verbal wars that Kim Jong Un’s regime has unfurled over the course of the last year.

But the tense current situation is only amplified by a rather open want expressed by North Korea wherein it’s expressed its desire that South Korea should cancel all military drills that it is currently carrying out jointly with the United States. It also wishes for all American military assets to be removed from the Korean peninsula. It is, of course, not hard to see where North Korea’s insecurities arise from given that a pronounced American presence in the Korean peninsula would pose a direct threat to undermine its nuclear ambition.