All We Need to Do Is Give Peace a Chance

Well, here we go again. Trouble in Olympic city. There is rioting in the streets of Seoul, South Korea, and political unrest throughout the country. And, if the trouble continues or escalates, a bunch of politicians almost certainly will be compelled to take a meeting and determine the fates of athletes who have been in training for years.

Either the Koreans could come to the conclusion that it would be unwise to proceed with the Summer Olympics at this time, or some of their invited guests will come to the conclusion that it would be unsafe to pay a visit.

Much depends on how current events are resolved. On Saturday, the mothers, wives and supporters of political prisoners gathered in front of one government party’s headquarters, hurled bottles and eggs and demanded amnesty for their friends. Many arrests were made, but the Justice Ministry did announce that hundreds of prisoners would be released, beginning today.

Two demonstrators have died and many have been injured during anti-government street rallies in the last few weeks alone. Thousands of riot police, anticipating more violence, were stationed Saturday at the hospital where a college student died after being hit in the head with a tear-gas canister.

The same day this rioting took place, which happened to be America’s Independence Day, a U.S. ambassador, James R. Lilley, held a little reception that was attended by Kim Dae Jung, one of the opposition party leaders to the military-supported regime of President Chun Doo Hwan. The ambassador’s residence had to be heavily guarded. Presidential power changes hands in Korea next year, same as here. Anything can happen.

These are nervous times in South Korea, and it is a safe bet that government leaders throughout the world are monitoring the activities there, for it will be up to them to decide whether the safety of their countries’ athletes can be guaranteed. There is still a little more than 14 months remaining before the Games, but such decisions cannot be put off until the last minute.

Oh, how the world turns.

On the very day these political fireworks were taking place in the host city of the 1988 Olympics, beautiful sparklers and bursting firecrackers were seen and heard in Los Angeles, the site of the 1984 Olympics, where an event that could have encouraged world peace had been tarnished by the absence of boycotting athletes from the Soviet Union and its allies.

And, on this very same Saturday, at the Ismailovo Stadium in Moscow, a musical extravaganza co-sponsored by Soviets and Americans went off as smooth as silk, with U.S. rock acts including James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, Carlos Santana and the Doobie Brothers.

At the end of the show, all the performers gathered once more on stage and sang John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance.”

How nice it would be. How corny, how wonderful, how absolutely Frank Capra it would be if everybody could just get together and enjoy fun and games, and forget their troubles, and just get happy. How splendid it would have been if the Moscow concert could have gone off without 150 military transport vehicles outside the stadium, containing hundreds and hundreds of uniformed soldiers and security officers.

That, clearly, would be too much to expect in this day and age, and so, too, it is a lot to ask for the Koreans to set aside all other business just so the Olympic Games could go off without a hitch. Some of us had this fantasy, see, that South Koreans and North Koreans would curl their arms around one another’s shoulders, and let bygones be bygones, and link their arms together like Olympic rings. Oh, we dreamers.

When the International Olympic Committee recently suggested that four events be held in North Korea, just for harmony’s sake and to encourage the notion that the Games will be a co-operative venture, one of the events they volunteered was road cycling. The proposed course would take cyclists from North Korea, across the Demilitarized Zone, and into Seoul.

This is a dangerous place. There are 1.5 million troops in the vicinity, near the 38th Parallel. It is, to borrow a phrase from that oxymoronic prototype, military intelligence, a hot spot. One of the 40,000 American soldiers stationed in South Korea recently said, “Imagine (them) falling off the bikes and into mine fields.”

The president of the Seoul Olympic Organizing Committee, Park Seh-Jik, was quoted recently by United Press International as saying, “We are, without doubt, ready to accept, receive and welcome the world to Seoul.” Well, we hope so. The city has invested years of paper work, planning and construction, not to forget $3 billion. It deserves to enjoy its role as host as much as Los Angeles did.

Once again, the athletes are suffering, for they would be the ones in danger, just as they would be the ones in danger of seeing all their Olympic training and ideals go down the tubes. Some of them already are wondering when someone intends to step forward and say: “Let’s call the whole thing off.” Some of them, those with political or social consciences, already are thinking that would be a good idea.

One of the strangest visions of the 1988 Olympics is the one that occurs to those of us with vivid memories of the 1972 Games in Munich. We shudder with the realization that some of the, say, gymnasts who would be performing in Seoul were not even born when 1972’s massacre of Israelis shook the world. It already is ancient history to these kids. They might not even know about it.

As the world turns, we pray for silent nights to come to Korea. The Olympic Games, well, they represent little more than a festival of running and jumping to some people, a two-week company picnic, no more urgent than a Moscow rock concert. To others of us, though, they represent a chance, a chance to bring people together, to settle differences, to turn unrest into rest. It is a chance to give peace a chance.