After his historic and closely watched trip to Singapore for a summit with US President Donald Trump, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s next trip abroad could be to Indonesia this August in order to attend the Asian Games being hosted in Jakarta and Palembang.
Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla confirmed that President Joko Widodo has formally invited both Kim Jong Un and his South Korean counterpart, President Moon Jae-in, to attend the 2018 Asian Games, which will run from August 18 to September 2.
“The president has indeed invited the two Korean heads of state,” Kalla said at a press conference on the Asian Games today as quoted by Kompas.
The vice president said there was no word yet on whether either leader would accept the invitation but said Indonesia would be happy if they could both attend.
The two Koreas made big news yesterday when The Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) announced that athletes from the North and South would team up to form unified teams to compete in three sports at this year’s Asian Games: basketball, dragon boat racing and rowing. The unified teams will specifically be competing in six events: women’s basketball (5×5); men’s and women’s dragon boat racing; and three rowing events.
“This will be a history maker for the Asian Games and for the Asian continent considering it’s the first time North and South Korea united as a single team for several sports competitions,” said Vinod Kumar Tiwari, OCA Director of International and National Olympics Committee Relations in a statement.
The two Koreas will be competing under a unified peninsula flag and will walk side by side in the opening ceremony “in the spirit of unity and friendship”
As exciting and inspiring as the two Korea team-up is, focus on that would of course quickly fall to the wayside were the infamous Kim Jong-un actually to accept the invitation to come watch the games in Indonesia. We’d say the odds of him making that trip are quite small, but then again we didn’t think there was a real chance the Kim-Trump Summit would actually happen until it did, so who knows.
