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North Korea's decision to withdraw from the upcoming Tokyo Olympics will not stop Kim Jong-un's regime from claiming and celebrating gold medals at home, according to a leading expert on the country.
The regime's athletes could be credited with winning gold medals without even travelling to the Games, says the senior lecturer at the International College of Management and visiting fellow at ANU.
"I won't be surprised," he told The Ticket.
"There will be some photo opportunities and doctored pictures of athletes being celebrated and applauded worldwide … because the news is also controlled and manipulation with the information goes back decades starting with the Korean war and the division of the Korean peninsula — which is continuing."
For that reason, too, there will not be a combined Olympic bid for the 2032 Games, according to Dr Petrov, despite frequent reports of one.
The International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, is believed to be a strong supporter of a unified bid after the success of the joint women's ice hockey team at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.
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Athletes from the North and South first marched into an Olympic opening ceremony under a unified flag at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.
"As long as the war is continuing we shouldn't be expecting peaceful marches of joy between North and South Korean teams under a unified flag of Korea, it is simply unimaginable," Dr Petrov said.
"What happened in Sydney in the year 2000 or even a couple of years ago in the Pyeongchang winter Olympic Games was another anomaly.
"What we see these days is we are just back to normal, back to the cold war, and of course where there's a cold war there's no place or time for heart-warming opportunities so we are back to where we were decades ago."
Tokyo will be the first Summer Olympics since the Seoul games in 1988 that a team from the North will not be competing.
A statement from the North Korean Olympic Committee said: "The committee decided not to join the 32nd Olympic Games to protect athletes from the global health crisis caused by the coronavirus."
In the West, doubt has been cast over North Korea's claims it does not have any COVID-19 infections and has suffered no deaths from the virus.
It is a claim Dr Petrov said he believed.
"I personally trust this claim," he said.
"I believe that North Korea had everything done and put in place in terms of domestic and border restrictions, they closed the borders first in the world, it was done in January 2020 even before China and Australia did it," he said.
"North Korea shut its borders and made it absolutely impenetrable not only for official trade but for smugglers, for spies, for anyone.
"It's a frontline, no-one can cross the border with China, with Russia or the demilitarised zone with South Korea.
"North Korea also put in place many precautionary measures such as keeping away the migratory birds or cleaning the snow which was blown from across the border or the yellow dust that seasonally comes from China to the Korean Peninsula.
"North Korea simply isolated the country, and they did it decades ago — it happened after the Korean War.
"So, any kind of virus, whether it's a coronavirus, or the virus of capitalism, or recklessly spreading rumours about the life outside of North Korea is going to deliver a major blow, or at least put at risk the survival of the regime, which is not acceptable for Kim Jong-un and the groups of elites that support him.
"And of course they didn't want the national squad to travel overseas and return and put at risk the rest of the nation which potentially might be prone to any form of foreign virus which may be misinterpreted as coronavirus and put at risk the survival of the Kim dynasty which is not going to be acceptable.
"Cancelling the participation in the Olympics is a minor nuisance for the North Korean establishment but it's a major bonus for its long-term survival."
Meanwhile, an IOC spokesman said the organisation had not received "any official application" from North Korea "to be released from their obligation to take part in the Olympic Games according to the Olympic charter".
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