SEOUL – North and South Korea decided on Friday to send a letter to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), requesting the body to allow them to co-host the 2032 Summer Olympics.
Sports officials from both sides held talks to discuss ways of expanding sports exchanges, a joint statement said in this regard.
The statement also added they agreed to form a combined team to compete in the men’s Handball World Championship in Germany next year.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un agreed to pursue the joint Olympics bid at their summit in Pyongyang in September this year.
Athletes from North and South Korea marched under a unified peninsula flag at the opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics earlier this year, and the two Koreas have seen a significant thaw in tensions since.
Indonesia and India have also expressed an interest in hosting the Summer Games in 2032.
The Summer Olympic Games, first held in 1896, is a quadrennial international multi-sport event. The most recent Olympics were held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2016.
The IOC has selected Tokyo, Japan, to host the Summer Olympics for a second time in 2020. The 2024 Summer Olympics will be held in Paris, France, for a third time, exactly one hundred years after the city’s last Summer Olympics in 1924.
The IOC has also selected Los Angeles, California, to host its third Summer Games in 2028.
