North Korea’s Ping-Pong Diplomacy?: Revisiting the 1979 Pyongyang World Table Tennis Championships

Abstract

This paper seeks to explore North Korea’s use of sports diplomacy, in particularly pingpong diplomacy with the United States during the Cold War. North Korea and the United States have no diplomatic relations but since the 1970s, North Korea began to explore ways to ameliorate relations with the United States through public diplomacy including by means of sports. By exploring the 1979 World Table Tennis Championships in Pyongyang, this study hopes to expand the discourse on North Korea’s sports diplomacy and examine the process and outcome it had on creating diplomatic avenues for communication, exchange, and engagement with the United States. This article analyzes the failures and successes as well as strategies of North Korea’s ping-pong diplomacy and the impact it had on North Korea’s policy towards the United States.