North Korea targets US over Beijing Olympics boycott, calls it 'insult to spirit' of games

Launching an attack against the US after announcing its withdrawal from the 2022 Beijing Olympics, North Korea on Thursday accused "hostile forces" of preventing the Games' success. North Korea blamed the US and its allies for getting ever more "undisguised" in their moves against China aimed at preventing the successful opening of the Olympics, Kyodo News reported. It even called the boycott "an insult to the spirit of the international Olympic Charter".

This comes as North Korea announced that it has decided not to participate in the Beijing 2022 Olympics due to activities of the “hostile forces” and the COVID-19 pandemic. The communist regime leader’s Kim Jong-Un’s decision was conveyed to China in a letter from North Korea's national Olympic committee and sports ministry, state-run media reported. North Korea also notified that it did not send a team to last summer's Tokyo Games due to the same reason, the coronavirus pandemic.

'Moves to disgrace the international image of China', DPRK says 

As DPRK launched an attack on Washington for the diplomatic boycott of the winters game scheduled in China, it said the "US and its vassal forces are getting ever more undisguised in their moves against China aimed at preventing the successful opening of the Olympics," KCNA reported. North Korea rejected "those moves, branding them as an insult to the spirit of the international Olympic Charter and as a base act of attempting to disgrace the international image of China," the news agency reported the country's organizations as saying. 

The preparations for the Beijing Olympics, which will open on Feb. 4, are "being satisfactorily made thanks to the positive efforts" by the leadership under Chinese President Xi Jinping, North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency reported. Pyongyang also promised to work with China towards the success of the Beijing Games in the future, the officials stated, according to KCNA.

During his speech in 2018, the new year, North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un had extended an olive branch to South Korea, as he had also categorically stressed that his communist country will participate in the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics hosted by the South in February that year. Kim Jong Un’s sister Kim Yo Jong then took part in the games and was a part of a high-ranking North Korean delegation to the Olympics when the South organized it. 

As the United States and its allies including Canada, Britain, and Australia announced a diplomatic boycott of the games, DPRK has also condemned the move. Earlier the former US President Donald Trump, who was the first leader globally to visit North Korea’s Jim Jong Un had also echoed similar sentiments about the Biden administration’s move. 

Trump condemned the US-led boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in China, rejecting the idea as ‘terrible,’ and adding that such politically motivated moves may impact the spirits of the players. In a televised interview with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo, Trump lambasted Chinese President Xi Jinping, saying that he ‘is a killer, but I had a great relationship with him.’ Former US leader then said that he wouldn’t encourage the US to boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing “because of how it makes the country look.” He cited the experience of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, as he said, that he “watched Jimmy Carter do it [in 1980] and it was terrible.”