TOKYO — South Korea’s scrappy women’s ice hockey team has worked hard to earn an underdog’s right to challenge bigger, more experienced opponents at the Winter Olympics starting next month in Pyeongchang.
But after years of effort to build unity among the players, including one from the United States and another American who became a naturalized South Korean citizen, the South Korean team is frustrated at suddenly being made a pawn in a geopolitical drama: In a grand gesture of sports diplomacy, the North and South Korean governments agreed last week to field a joint women’s ice hockey team at the Winter Games.