PUTTING POLITICS ASIDE, KOREAN GYMNASTS POSE FOR OLYMPIC SELFIE

[It is hardly unprecedented for athletes from the two countries, which have technically been at war for decades, to mingle at the Olympics or other international sporting events. Their delegations marched together in the opening ceremonies of the 2000 and 2004 Summer Olympics and the 2006 Winter Games. In 1991, they even fielded joint table tennis and soccer teams for international competition.]

By Choe Sang-Hun

The gymnasts Lee Eun-ju, right, of South Korea and Hong Un-jong  of North Korea

at the Rio Olympic Arena last week. Relations between the countries have been

at a low over the North’s nuclear and missile tests.

Credit Dylan Martinez/Reuters

SEOUL, South Korea — Lee Eun-ju was not expected to be one of South Korea’s big names at the Rio Olympics. She joined the country’s gymnastics team as a last-minute replacement after another athlete was injured. Indeed, she failed to advance to the finals.

But Ms. Lee, 17, has found herself in the spotlight at home and abroad, thanks to a symbolically significant selfie.

Last week, before the Games started, Ms. Lee approached a North Korean gymnast, Hong Un-jong, 27, during a training session. As the women from opposite sides of Korea’s divide posed, smiling, for a photograph on Ms. Lee’s phone, journalists snapped pictures of the moment, which has since been hailed as capturing the Olympic spirit.

“This is why we do the Olympics,” Ian Bremmer, president of the political risk consultancy Eurasia Group and a frequent commentator on Korean issues, wrote on Twitter.

It is hardly unprecedented for athletes from the two countries, which have technically been at war for decades, to mingle at the Olympics or other international sporting events. Their delegations marched together in the opening ceremonies of the 2000 and 2004 Summer Olympics and the 2006 Winter Games. In 1991, they even fielded joint table tennis and soccer teams for international competition.

But in recent years, inter-Korean relations have been at a low point over the North’s nuclear and missile tests, as both sides traded threats ranging from sanctions to outright war.

So, when the two athletes put aside national differences in a brief, friendly encounter, many found it unexpected and heartwarming.

Rio is Ms. Lee’s first time at the Games, but Ms. Hong won gold in the vault in Beijing in 2008, making her North Korea’s first gymnast to win an Olympic medal.

A South Korean news report said that despite Ms. Lee’s elimination after the preliminary competition, she was being “reborn as an Olympic icon.”

Despite such sentiments, the photo has not led to noticeable thawing in the relationship between the two Koreas. Neither government has commented on it. On Wednesday, the South’s Unification Ministry reaffirmed that it had no plans to reopen an industrial park, once jointly operated with the North, that it closed six months ago to punish the North for its nuclear weapons development.

Since the Korean War, which ended in 1953 with a truce rather than a peace accord, the two countries have not allowed phone calls, letters or emails among their citizens. Cross-border visits are barred without official permission, which both governments rarely give.

But North and South Koreans maintain a strong ethnic affinity, along with a hope that they will one day reunify. South Koreans, for example, almost always root for the North’s team in international competitions — except when it competes against their own.

@ The New York Times