The Peace Games: European press and diplomatic relations between North and South Korea during the 2018 Winter Olympics

Abstract

The 2018 Winter Olympics held in the South Korean town of Pyeongchang became the epicentre of international diplomatic and geopolitical dialogue for several weeks. North Korea's unexpected decision to want to participate in this sporting event only one month before the opening ceremony triggered a surprising diplomatic rapprochement with its South Korean neighbours. The media is considered a powerful instrument capable of influencing behaviours, attitudes, and actions through the transmission of ideas, values, and norms. The main objective of this research is to identify the dominant discourses surrounding diplomatic relations between South and North Korea during the 2018 Winter Olympics and to analyze how they were presented through the general news press in Spain, France, and England. The Spanish newspapers El País and El Mundo, the English newspapers The Guardian and The Independent, and the French newspapers Le Monde and Les Echos were selected. A content analysis was carried out on 154 news items divided as follows: Spanish press 61, English press 40, and French press 58. The main results showed how the media perpetuated attitudes and ideas around cultural identity and diplomatic relations in sports and the Olympic Games. There was a clear increase in the number of news articles related to the research topic in the weeks prior to the Games (especially in the Spanish press), while during the month following the sporting event, there was a clear reduction in the number of news coverage.

Keywords

• juegos olímpicos
• diplomacia deportiva
• prensa
• corea del norte
• corea del sur.