Kim Jong-un’s WEAKNESS could see North Korea join Seoul for Winter Olympics

Sabre-rattling in the region has raised fears the Games, due to be held at a mountain resort just 50 miles from the world’s most heavily fortified border, could be marred by political tensions, or missile launches.

Economic sanctions on Kim’s reclusive nation are mounting but the sporting world and South Korea are doing everything in their power to try to coax Pyongyang to accept an invitation to the Pyeongchang Olympics and ease the tensions that have hurt ticket sales.

Seoul MP Song Ki-hun said: “We are doing our utmost for the North’s participation but Kim Jong-un is very unpredictable.”

Kim, a basketball fan who counts former NBA star Dennis Rodman as a friend, has boosted spending as part of his ambition to turn the North into a “sports power”.

If North Korean athletes are allowed to participate it will be the first time in post-war Olympic history that a country has hosted a team from a nation with which it is officially at war – the Korean War ended in 1953 with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.

And when South Korea hosted the summer games in Seoul in 1988 North Korea’s founding father Kim Il Sung boycotted the event after a plan to co-host fell apart.

A European official from a winter sports federation, who asked not to be identified, said: “With North Korea there, things will be smoother.

“The Games will only be really successful if they are smooth. If the United States, North Korea and China all have their teams in South Korea then that will be a success.”

North Korea missed an October 31 deadline to accept invitations from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and South Korea to join the Games but officials said sports-mad Kim could wait until the last minute to decide.

So far, only two North Korean athletes have qualified for the Games: figure-skating pair Ryom Tae Ok and Kim Ju Sik, whose routines have been set to music by The Beatles and Ginette Reno.

An IOC official said others could qualify for cross-country skiing, and possibly speed skating and biathlon, a combination of skiing and shooting.

Kim has made sport a major focus of his plan to improve living standards and since taking power in 2011, spending on sport in the nation’s annual budgets has risen faster than most other areas.

In 2014 he set out his ambition for sports in an open letter to his Workers’ Party urging people and athletes to help make sport part of daily life and uphold “the party’s plan of building our country into a sports power, sweat more in training in order to bring glory to the country by winning gold medals”.

He is also believed to have had school textbooks revised to say that he began shooting a gun at age three, was off-road driving before turning eight and had twice beaten foreign master mariners in ship races.

Simon Cockerell, head of Beijing-based Koryo Tours, which has brought competitors to the North for events ranging from the Pyongyang Marathon to Frisbee-throwing and cricket, said he had noticed an increasing focus on sports under Kim.

He said: “More events seem to be happening, North Korean sports teams are traveling more than ever, and success is celebrated more than before.”

At the 2014 Asian Games in South Korea, North Korea’s athletes won 11 gold medals, ranking sixth, and were welcomed with a victory parade and a banquet with Kim who thanked them for validating the “party’s plan for building a sports powerhouse”.