The Unified Korean Table Tennis Team

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 14 June 2018

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

In 1991, amid escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula, Pyongyang and Seoul agreed to field a united Korean table tennis team at the World Championships in Japan. Previously bitter rivals, players from the North and South spent more than a month training together and eventually bonding. Their experience inspired a hit film in South Korea, where ping pong is a very popular sport. Simon Watts spoke to former South Korean women's champion, Hyun Jung-Hwa about being part of that unified team.

PHOTO: The Korean women's team on the podium (Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless
0:06.8	searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the
0:11.8	telly we share what we've been watching
0:14.0	Cladie Aide.
0:16.0	Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
0:19.0	Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
0:21.0	And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less searching
0:25.7	and a lot more auction. Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:30.0	You're listening to the Witness Podcast from the BBC World Service and this week we're
0:35.0	bringing you stories from the archive about the Korean Peninsula.
0:39.0	Today we're going back to the early 1990s when North and South Korea formed a United Sports
0:44.8	team in an attempt to improve relations. The sport they chose was one of the
0:49.7	most popular in Asia, table tennis. Simon Watts reports.
0:57.0	It's May 1991, the World Table Tennis Championships in Chiba, Japan.
1:03.0	A United Korean team are on the podium
1:06.0	to receive their gold medals for the women's event.
1:09.0	One jiboules, it's not,
1:11.0	because of me,
1:12.0	something just so... Something just
1:15.0	swelled up inside me. I never used to cry as a player,
1:18.0	but this was different because I cried so much.
1:22.0	It was more than just winning a medal. It was about achieving something together.
	...

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