The boycott of the 1988 Summer Olympic Games in Seoul followed four years after the Soviet-led boycott of the 1984 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. The boycott involved seven socialist countries: North Korea and four of its allies, Cuba, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, and Madagascar, all of whom withdrew specifically in protest against North Korea's failure to secure a role as co-host of the Games; and the Seychelles and Albania, who did not offer reasons for their absence.
North Korea had sought a co-hosting role ever since Seoul was selected in 1981 as host city for the 1988 Summer Olympics, and to that end, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and South Korea engaged the North in negotiations on the logistical matters involved in lending a minimum number of events from the Summer Games to North Korea. As negotiations wore on howeverwith the North vacillating on how many events they sought to co-host, and the IOC's receipt of private assurances of Soviet attendancethe IOC and South Korea found that they "needed talks more than they needed an agreement". That failure to secure an agreement prompted North Korea and four of its allies to boycott the Games.
Coming at a time during the waning years of the Cold War, the boycott represented a fracturing of the Eastern Bloc alliance, with a preponderance of Bloc countries choosing to attend the Seoul Olympics rather than support North Korea. The following year North Korea hosted its own sporting event, the 13th World Festival of Youth and Students, in Pyongyang.
Leadup to boycott 'Co-hosting' role Cognizant of the enmity existing between the two Koreas and wishing to prevent any actions which might undermine the Games' organization, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided early on to make ensuring North Korean participation in the Games a priority. The idea of having North Korea co-host the Games did not originate with the IOC; rather, the idea first came from Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti, who suggested to South Korean Foreign Minister Lee Won Kyong on June 27, 1984, that one way of assuring a "smooth running of the Games" in Seoul was for South Korea to consider ceding a particular number of sporting events and locations to the North, who would act as co-host for those segments. That idea was similarly suggested by Cuban President Fidel Castro, who, on November 29, 1984, sent a letter to the president of the IOC, Juan Antonio Samaranch, where Castro criticized the IOC's choice of Seoul for the Summer Games and requested that the Games be split between North and South Korea. The precedent for carrying out an Olympic Games' athletic events in two separate countries was previously set at the 1956 Summer Olympic Games, when Australia hosted the majority of events in Melbourne while equestrian events were held in Stockholm.
In order to explore how an arrangement for sharing the 1988 Games might work, the IOC proposed coordinating a series of joint meetings to begin in 1985.
First joint meeting The first joint meetings between the IOC and the North and South Korean NOCs began on October 8, 1985, in Lausanne. Kim Yu-sun, North Korean Minister of Sport and President of the Olympic Committee of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (OCDPRK), put forward the following proposals: Renaming the Games to the Korean Olympic Games A joint organizing committee to replace the SLOOC North and South to field a single, combined athletic team Opening and closing ceremonies held in Pyongyang and Seoul North and South to split evenly all athletic events
Kim Jong-ha, President of the South Korean National Olympic Committee (then known as the Korean Amateur Sport Association or KASA), responded by citing the legal contracts which the IOC entered into with the South Korean NOC and the Republic of Korea. While the South was prepared to offer a minimum number of events to the North, the "established facts" of those contracts precluded them from agreeing to many of the items on the North's list save for two modified elements: That a location within North Korea serve as a partial site for one athletic competition, perhaps a cycling event, and that the two Korean teams enter Seoul's Olympic stadium together in one instance during the Opening Ceremonies. After two days of meetings the first round was adjourned until a second round could be held, scheduled for January 1986.
Meeting of the socialist sports ministers' conference In the time between the first two joint sessions, Samaranch traveled to Hanoi on November 1416, 1985, to attend the 34th Socialist Countries Sports Ministers' Conference in order to gauge the level of support North Korea might receive from its ideologically oriented brethren. Upon his arrival, Samaranch was disappointed to learn that North Korean Minister Kim Yu-sun was using his time in Hanoi to lobby other countries' participants into adopting a categorical resolution against the Games occurring only in Seoul. Despite this lobbying, only Cuba at this early stage appeared to be so-strongly supportive of North Korea's proposals that it was considering a boycott, with Cuban Minister of Sport Conrado Martinez using his speech time to effectively deliver what Samaranch called "a diatribe" against the IOC and the 1988 Games.
The other nations present offered only cautious support when discussing the matter, seemingly avoiding any commitments to a boycott. Chairman of the Czechoslovak Olympic Committee, Antonín Himl, supported the idea of organizing some events in North Korea, while Vice-President of the Romanian Athletics Federation, Lia Manoliu, merely reaffirmed her support of the Olympic Movement and the IOC. East German Minister of Sport Gunther Heinz spoke highly of the IOC's first joint session with the two Korean NOCs, stating that it demonstrated the possibility for positive results. Deputy Chairman of the Youth and Sports Committee at the Bulgarian Council of Ministers, Trendafil Martinski, mentioned his country's wish to avoid the boycotts that affected 1980 and 1984, while Soviet Minister of Sport Marat Gramov was not particularly insistent upon any course of action. President of the Polish Olympic Committee, Marian Renke, advanced his belief that nothing about Seoul's being chosen could be changed, no matter what North Korea was hoping for, while the Mongolian Minister of Sport, Dabaagiyn Dashdobdon, expressed only mild support for North Korea. The Hungarian NOC's representative emphasized that they supported any efforts that aimed to stage the 1988 Games jointly by South and North Korea in a way acceptable to both.
Second and third joint meetings
The second joint meeting between the IOC and North and South Korea occurred on January 89, 1986, in Lausanne. At this meeting, the IOC announced the number of events they were willing to cede to the North had increased from one event to three events: soccer, table tennis and archery. Another request the IOC was now willing to accept wholesale was for changing the name of those competitions held strictly in Pyongyang to The XXIVth Olympic Games in Pyongyang. Despite this, the number of events requested by the North remained stubbornly high at eight events, far more than the South and the IOC were prepared to accept. By March 1986 that number had dropped to six events. By the time of the third round held in June 1986, North Korea said they were willing to accept four events: table tennis, archery, preliminary-round soccer, and a 100-km cycle race from Pyongyang to Seoul. However, by February 1987 North Korean demands for the number of athletic competitions had inexplicably increased back to eight events. Samaranch stated that "I think the offer we made to the North Koreans was both historic and very generous...there could be minor changes, but we cannot go beyond that".
North Korean applications for Soviet influence On May 16, 1986, Hwang Jang-yop, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, met in Moscow with his Soviet counterpart Alexander Yakovlev, where Hwang pressed the Soviets to continue placing pressure on the South regarding the Games' allocations, stating "our adversary began making concessions to us when the Soviet Union and other socialist countries put it under pressure. ... However, when this pressure weakened, the adversary tried to regain the lost ground". Hwang also called out members of the Eastern Bloc who were failing in their support of the North, lamenting that "unfortunately, some of our friends are hurrying with the agreement to go to Seoul for participation in the Olympic Games", and that the North would like instead "for all socialist countries to take firm class-based positions and undertake joint actions to expose the plans of the adversary and to support our proposals on the joint organization of the Games". Hwang repeated his request to Yakovlev along with one particular suggestion: In October 1986 North Korean leader Kim Il Sung met with Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, who informed Kim of his belief that attendance at Olympic events with one's opponents would prove more influential than boycotting them, saying "the Olympics is a huge channel for cooperation, for influencing in the needed direction". When the discussion turned to the possibility of a boycott by the Eastern Bloc in support of North Korea achieving its aims, Gorbachev said, "if we took this road, we would do injury to ourselves, and to our policy". Gorbachev's response to Kim indicated that he realized that "sports and politics were mutually intertwined, and that by associating the USSR with Pyongyang’s intransigent attitude, he would sabotage his own broader foreign policy goals".
Civil unrest and fourth joint meeting The death of the Korean activist Park Chong-chul in January 1987 while undergoing interrogation at the hands of South Korean police led to mass protests being held across South Korea. The further death of a university student in July and concerns over South Korea's Presidential election system exacerbated the protests against the government, leading commentators around the world to question South Korea's ability to successfully orchestrate the coming Summer Games. A speech given by Roh Tae-woo, the candidate for President of South Korea at the next election, was viewed positively as resolving the protests.
Meanwhile, the fourth round of joint meetings began on July 14, 1987. Despite Samaranch's previous claim from February 1987 that the proposals offered in June 1986 were likely the last, best offer to the North, the offer being discussed in July 1987 was an "improved proposal" of four (4) full events plus one (1) partial event: Full men's and women's table tennis competitions Full men's and women's archery competitions Full women's volleyball competitions Full cycle road race to be run entirely in the North Part of the soccer tournament