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Gold medalist Ri Se-gwang of North Korea salutes on the podium at the medal ceremony for Men's Vault on day 10 of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games at Rio Olympic Arena on August 15, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.Getty Images

Before the Rio Olympics, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un set a target for his contingent: five golds and 17 medals over all. It was a preposterous ask for a team that had never before won in the double digits.

Predictably, the team failed to meet the Dear Leader's arbitrary objective. That prompted credible suggestions that some of the underperformers would be sent to work in coal mines as a punishment.

Whether that was true, you could see that something unpleasant was in the offing. One emblematic photo captured weightlifter Choe Hyo-sim, a silver medalist, standing on the podium with the look of someone contemplating the quality of gym facilities in the gulag.

No country less embodies the Olympic spirit of friendly competition than North Korea. For them, sport is war. Increasingly, their neighbours seem to be worried that the figurative might become literal.

A few days ago, the new South Korean government floated the idea that the two enemies might bid jointly for soccer's 2030 World Cup.

On Wednesday, it went further. South Korea's Minister of Sport, Do Jong-hwan, suggested out of the blue that the North will be invited to co-host the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang.

"Hopefully, we'll be able to thaw lingering tensions as we try to bring North Korea on board," Do said.

The North would hold an as-yet-undetermined number of downhill events at the country's only tourist trap, the Masikryong Ski Resort. Based on photos, Masikryong looks like the hotel in The Shining – only scarier. However, it does have snow. North Korea isn't very good at organizing anything, but it's hard to see how it could screw up weather.

On its face, this offer feels like encouraging a bully. The North has increased its usual provocations in recent months – launching missiles willy-nilly into the sea, fiddling around at its banned nuclear testing facilities and returning foreign prisoners in comas. Although always erratic, the country seems as close to the edge as it has ever been.

It's not hard to guess the reason why: the Olympics.

North Korea has a notorious inferiority complex when it comes to international sport. The country's tame media routinely misinforms readers of results, inflating athletic achievements. Contests are rarely shown in real time lest the citizenry learn North Korea is not, in fact, the best at everything. What they do see is edited for maximum propaganda value.

Whenever the North has veered off script, it has gone poorly. At the 2010 World Cup, the cabal in charge were so buoyed by the national team's battling performance against Brazil in the opening game that they decided to broadcast the subsequent one, against Portugal, live – a first. The North Koreans lost 7-0. During the second half of that match, as things went completely sideways, the play-by-play commentators stopped speaking entirely.

The score went unreported in the next day's papers. After the tournament, the soccer team's hapless coach was reportedly brought in for several hours of ritual humiliation by youth activists, then sent to a re-education camp.

North Korea – not good losers. It's an especially poor trait if you do it as often as they do.

The Winter Olympics are particularly bleak for them. North Korea has never won a winter gold. They haven't won a medal of any colour at a Winter Games in 25 years. And, to this point, no North Korean athlete has qualified to compete in Pyeongchang. Their last, best hope is in figure skating – not exactly the muscular expression of physical dominance the leadership is presumably hoping for.

So one can see how the Olympics, which are being held less than 100 kilometres from their militarized frontier, are a bit of a sore spot. And an inviting target.

With eight months to go until the torch is lit, that is suddenly occurring to a lot of important people, many of whom are changing their plans.

The Olympics are just as much a corporate junket as a sports event. Long-time U.S. broadcaster NBC has traditionally gifted its biggest ad clients with an all-expenses-paid trip to the Games. Next year, owing to security concerns, it's thinking of a slightly different venue: Jackson Hole, Wyo.

Because, while the Rockies may lack in Olympic atmosphere, they do run a lower risk of being irradiated during the opening ceremony. It is the modern tendency to laugh off the worst-case risks that always get hyped before a Games – remember all the black widow suicide bombers who were headed for Sochi? – but this time the threat feels less fantastical.

Since threats make people angry, the knee-jerk reaction here is to deny North Korea any of the toys it so badly wants until it smartens up. This is the first rule of diplomatic parenting: No good can come of rewarding bad global behaviour.

Every country has a right to compete in the Olympics. But not every one deserves the chance to use them as a marketing opportunity, which is the whole point of hosting.

That's one way to go. Ultimately, it'll be up to North Korea and the International Olympic Committee (who will no doubt lunge for this chance to improve their moral standing with good works and maybe win a Nobel Peace Prize in the bargain).

Whether the North decides to take the olive branch, one is inclined to see the pragmatic wisdom of South Korea's proposition.

Aside from money, sport remains our most powerful inducement to international good citizenship. A sporting ban did more than sanctions to steer South Africa back toward the right path, and then Nelson Mandela used the 1995 Rugby World Cup to help stitch up the national wound.

Even the most despotic regimes realize that no one admires the churls who skip the world's Olympic class reunion. Not because it's unfriendly, but because it looks weak and cowardly. You can't keep telling your own people that you're just the greatest if you don't prove it occasionally.

North Korea doesn't deserve to host an Olympics. Under this plan, they wouldn't. Not really.

But if allowing them to pretend to do so makes the world an even fractionally safer place, it is sensible to make the offer.

Sport climbing will make its Olympic debut at the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo. Climbers Lucas Uchida and Nathan Smith demonstrate the three disciplines of the event.

The Canadian Press

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