The Unofficial 2008 Beijing Olympics Blog

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When seeing this, one can only wonder how the Olympic’s motto “One World, One Dream” fits into all of this….

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Unfortunately, a message of peace and blessing from today, had to be joined by a message of political injustness and hatred as well. Sadly this is how our world revolves.

South and North Korea, the two raging enemy states, have decided that each of their Olympic staff won’t march alongside each other, during the opening ceremony. The two countries opened the games in Athens and Sydney by marching alongside.

Technically speaking, the two countries are still at war, after the terrible onslaught between 1950-53.

IOC president Jacques Rogge said the International Olympic Committee had been hoping the two Koreas would march together in a joint team for Friday’s procession as they had done in Sydney in 2000 and four years later in Athens.

“We have tried to have this in Beijing but unfortunately this was not possible,” Rogge said. “Unfortunately the political leaders in the North and the South did not agree.”

Rogge said the two teams would walk one behind the other as the marching order was drawn up alphabetically. South Korea has 260 athletes and North Korea 60.

As we speak, the current (*sigh*) U.S. President, George W. Bush, is probably on a private jet heading over to China, where the head of state is set to attend the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, much to the delight of the Chinese government, and dismissal of various other groups on the contrary.

There’s been a lot of talks earlier about the ethics behind attending the Beijing Olympics of a head of state, after the Olympics boycott proposel filed by France back in March, due to the Tibet escalations. Ironically French President Nicolas Sarkozy is also attending the opening ceremony, despite his nations was the one who wanted the olympics banned in the first place. Take in consideration he’s also the current EU president too, and you can imagine he’s under a lot of fire too.

There’s a thin line between sports and politics, and while athletes themselves can’t possibly boycott an event, as it would only be in vain, wasting their years of work, we can only turn to our politicians to settle things right.

President Bush, a ‘true’ sports fan himself, says he’s trying to increase the chances of improving human rights in China by attending the Olympics and meeting President Hu Jintao of China. The latter made a visit in the States back in July, where he further invited President Bush to join the Games, firmly adding: “I highly appreciated that President Bush has on various occasions expressed his opposition to politicising the Olympic Games.” Fascinating isn’t it?