[Global Column] Diplomatic Challenges Left by the Beijing Olympics

The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, where athletes from around the world competed fiercely for 17 days, have come to a close. The Olympics is a global sports festival enjoyed by all, but since athletes represent their countries, it can also serve as a catalyst for intensifying competition and conflicts between nations.

A notable example is the controversy over the "Hollywood action" by American short track speed skater Apolo Ohno during the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, which caused a Korean athlete to lose the gold medal. This incident triggered anti-American sentiment in Korean society. The sentiment further intensified after the tragic death of a Korean middle school girl crushed by a U.S. military armored vehicle stationed in Korea in June of the same year.

This Beijing Winter Olympics was held amid the international political environment of strategic competition between the U.S. and China, and Western countries led by the U.S. declared a "diplomatic boycott," which had the potential to escalate international conflicts even before the Games began. After the Olympics started, controversies over "biased judging" favoring the host country, China, further intensified conflicts. In particular, in short track speed skating, a strong event for Korea, Korean athletes were disqualified for reasons difficult to accept, and Chinese athletes won gold medals, leading to increased criticism of the host country China within Korean society.

The biased judging at this Beijing Olympics has left a difficult challenge for future Korean diplomacy. Critical sentiment toward China’s nationalist attitudes, such as cultural projects, had already been spreading among young Koreans in their 20s and 30s. This Olympics added fuel to such anti-China sentiment. Moreover, since the Olympics were held shortly before the 20th presidential election, all leading presidential candidates had to express some degree of sympathy with the anti-China sentiment. In this atmosphere, the Chinese Embassy in Korea stated that "some media and politicians are inciting anti-China sentiment," revealing China’s discomfort.

The core task for future Korean diplomacy is to find a strategy that maximizes Korea’s national interests amid the increasingly intense strategic competition between the U.S. and China. However, since democratization, diplomatic strategies are no longer chosen solely from an international political perspective. The linkage between international politics and domestic politics is deepening in the formulation of diplomatic strategies. If the U.S.-China strategic competition is the international political environment of Korean diplomacy, the spread of anti-China sentiment is likely to become a part of Korea’s international political environment in the future. Korean diplomacy now faces the strategic difficulty of having to play a "double-sided game" in this dual political environment.

Although there are strong voices against handling diplomatic issues for domestic political reasons, international politics and domestic politics are already closely connected, making strict separation politically impossible. Therefore, if anti-China sentiment continues to spread as it is now, diplomatic choices that do not consider this sentiment will severely undermine the domestic political foundation.

Conversely, if anti-China sentiment is used to establish a domestic political base, it will result in narrowing Korea’s diplomatic options amid the U.S.-China strategic competition. In this regard, forming a social consensus within Korean society on how to set Korea’s international status in the future has become a priority task over external strategic choices.

Jae-Hwan Jeong, Professor, Department of International Relations, Ulsan University