(ATR) North and South Korean athletes will team up in women’s basketball, canoeing and rowing during the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta and Palembang, Indonesia.
Agreement on the three teams followed a day of meetings in Jakarta between the two National Olympic Committees and the Olympic Council of Asia .
Within the three sports, a total of six disciplines will feature unified teams. Both men’s and women’s dragon boat will be unified, as will the men’s lightweight four, men’s lightweight eight, and women’s lightweight double sculls in rowing.
The canoeing discipline is still to be decided.
The combined basketball team comes after the two Koreas announced a series of basketball friendlies in Pyongyang and Seoul. South Korea will send teams to play in Pyongyang on July 4, with a return game to be scheduled.
North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un is reportedly a basketball fan and South Korea’s women’s team won gold at the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon.
The teams were said to be selected so as not to disrupt the athlete qualification quota needed to combine teams.
"The size of the joint teams will not exceed the athlete quota that applies to all other NOCs," the OCA said in a statement following the meeting.
The South Korean Canoe Federation pushed hardest for a joint team, according to Yonhap. Teams have until July 10 to register with the OCA, an extension granted due to the late decision to combine teams. The registration deadline for Jakarta 2018 is June 30.
Both Koreas already announced the delegations would combine for the opening and closing ceremonies, the eleventh time the two countries have marched together in international competitions.
"This will be an historic Asian Games for the OCA and for the continent because it will be the first time that North Korea and South Korea will form a unified team in certain sports," Vinod Tiwari, the OCA's director of international and NOC relations said to Yonhap. "They have marched together before in the opening ceremony, and we are delighted that they are extending their joint cooperation further in the spirit of unity and friendship."
The unified teams in Indonesia will be a landmark moment for the Asian Games, but will be the third instance of unified Korean teams this year. First, North and South Korea combined for women’s hockey at the 2018 Winter Olympics.Months later, the women’s table tennis teams combined after the quarterfinals of the World Team Table Tennis Championship. The combined team lost to Japan in the semifinal, but won a bronze medal.
Written by Aaron Bauer
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