Pyeongchang, South Korea
And finally, the stadium was full of people standing and cheering on Friday in what the Olympic hosts hope could stir a movement toward easing the hair-trigger tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula.
Every Olympics has its share of geopolitical back stories.
But organizers of the Winter Games in Pyeongchang — which opened with a spectacle heavy with lore and symbols binding North and South Korea — have emphasized them heavily as a chance to find a new path for neighbors frozen in a Cold War-era standoff.
Yet obstacles were evident even amid the outreach. The top U.S. envoy to the Games, Vice President Mike Pence, sat stone-faced as the crowd erupted in cheers for the unified Korean team — showing the rift between Washington and its South Korean ally on how to deal with the North’s nuclear and military ambitions.
The cheering came when athletes from North and South Korea walked together into Friday’s Opening Ceremonies under a single Korean flag in a rare display of unity.
The combined teams — dressed in white and introduced simply as “Korea” — entered the stadium under the blue-and-white “unification flag,” which shows the peninsula as one.
The Pyeongchang hosts cued up Arirang, a poignant, centuries-old Korean folk song that is considered an unofficial national anthem.
Two hockey players — one from North Korea and another from the South — took the Olympic torch to South Korean figure skating superstar Yuna Kim to light the Olympic cauldron.
The Games are taking place just 50 miles from the border with North Korea.
About 500 North Koreans, including 22 athletes, have traveled south for the Games, which will wrap up on Feb. 25.
But Pence did not join the joyous welcome for Korean detente: He remained seated with his wife, Karen Pence, and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, while others in the VIP box rose to cheer on the Koreans.
Those on their feet included South Korean President Moon Jae-in and the two senior North Koreans sent to the opening ceremonies — Kim Yo Jong, the sister of leader Kim Jong Un, and Kim Yong Nam, North Korea’s nominal head of state.
The North Korean pair were seated almost directly behind the Pences, but there was no interaction between them.
Earlier, Pence did not sit down for dinner at the reception for dignitaries that Moon hosted before the opening, instead eating with the American athletes. But Pence did call in to the reception and greeted everyone at the top table — except Kim Yong Nam, according to a South Korean presidential spokesman.
Pence “did not come across” the North Koreans at the reception, a Pence spokesman said.
The vice president’s deliberate snub to the North Koreans — and, by extension, the host country — highlighted the deep divisions between Washington and Seoul on how to deal with Pyongyang.
Moon promotes the Olympics as the “Peace Games” and hopes to use North Korea’s participation as a springboard to better relations between the estranged neighbors — and perhaps to broader denuclearization talks.
Moon warmly greeted Kim Yo Jong at Friday’s ceremony.
He will host her and the other senior North Korean officials for lunch today.
Also in the North’s delegation is Choe Hwi, a senior official blacklisted by the United Nations. Seoul had to seek a special U.N. exemption for Choe to spend three days in South Korea.
Choe and Kim Yo Jong also are under direct American sanctions for human rights abuses related to their roles in censoring information in North Korea.
In stark contrast to Moon’s outreach, Pence called North Korea “the most tyrannical regime on the planet” earlier on Friday, when he visited a memorial to 46 sailors who died when the Cheonan, a South Korean naval corvette, was sunk by a North Korean torpedo in 2010.
Pence also heard from North Korean defectors.
Pence has been waging a campaign to stop Pyongyang from “hijacking” the Olympics with its charm offensive.
He attended the Cheonan memorial with Fred Warmbier, the father of student Otto Warmbier, who died last year shortly after North Korea sent him home in a coma following 17 months of detention for stealing a propaganda poster. Fred Warmbier also attended the Opening Ceremonies, although he did not sit in the VIP box.
South Korea’s Moon, however, left no doubt about his aspirations for the Games.
“Had it not been for the Pyeongchang Olympics, some of us might not have had chance to be together in the same room,” he said at the reception for VIPs before the Opening Ceremonies.