[Citizen College Season 6] #3 Sports and International Politics

On October 27, 2022, the Peace and Democracy Institute and the Seongbuk District Office held the third lecture of the Citizen College Season 6  “Politics in Everyday Life.”  In this lecture Dr. DongJoon Park, senior researcher at PDI, presented the topic of “Sports and International Politics.”

Dr. Park talked about sports, soft power, and the global political implications of international sports competitions. Soft power is a means of persuasion, the ability to obtain through charm rather than coercion such things as money or power, and its constituent elements include culture and sports. In addition, sports competitions are used internationally as a means to show off the superiority and power of a state, to unite the nation, as a venue for diplomacy, and to improve the image of a nation. These effects were well demonstrated in the 1988 Seoul Olympics in Korea, the 2008 Beijing Olympics in China, and the 1964 and 2020 Tokyo Olympics in Japan. Lastly, the lecture dealt with the international political and economic influence of international sports events and the role of sports diplomacy in the context of inter-Korean relations.