While Seoul continues to tout the PyeongChang Olympics as a rare opportunity for engaging North Korea, experts paint bleaker prospects.

South Korea’s presidential office on Tuesday once again urged cooperation from all sides, and reiterated the Moon Jae-in administration’s hope to open a route to resolving security issues on the peninsula.

“The administration’s efforts to ‘resolve the Korean Peninsular crisis through dialogue’ has led to North Korea’s participation in the Olympics,” Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Park Soo-hyun said on Tuesday.

“Beyond peace on the Korean Peninsula, PyeongChang Olympics will be the primer for bringing forward peace in Northeast Asia, and world peace.”

Park’s statement came a day after President Moon Jae-in addressed the same issue, saying that the current inter-Korean talks on the Olympics must lead to dialogue between the US and North Korea.

Experts, however, say that such an outcome is highly unlikely.

“North Korea is likely to be using South Korea. On the surface (Pyongyang) is acting as though it is making a grand gesture, but it has different motives,” Konyang University professor emeritus Kim Tae-woo, former head of Korea Institute for National Unification, said.

North Korea has indeed implied that its decision to take part in the games was a “favor” to South Korea. In an editorial published on Sunday, North Korea’s Rodong Shinmun claimed that North Korea was “extending a hand of salvation” for the PyeongChang Olympics that had been headed to become “the least popular games in history.”

Kim Tae-woo added that while South Korea hopes to use the games to pave the way to denuclearization talks, it is highly unlikely that North Korea will comply.

“Ultimately, (North Korea’s participation) will add to the success of the games, but bring nothing to inter-Korean relations.”

In Tuesday’s address, Cheong Wa Dae again hit back at accusations of “Pyongyang Olympics.”

Led by the main opposition Liberty Korea Party, critics have accused the Moon Jae-in administration of being played by North Korea in the developments surrounding the regime‘s Olympic participation.

The main opposition has branded the games “Pyongyang Olympics” claiming that Moon administration’s actions will only enable Pyongyang to spread its propaganda.

“Using the outdated brand of ‘Pyongyang Olympics’ is incomprehensible. North Korean athletes took part in the 2014 Incheon Asian Games, and a high-level North Korean delegation watched the events,” Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Park Soo-hyun said.

Park also cited the Special Act on Support for the 2018 PyeongChang Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games passed in an apparent attempt to provide legal basis for the government’s treatment of the North Korean delegation that inspected concert venues in the South on Sunday and Monday. The act states “the State or local governments may provide administrative and financial support” in matters regarding fielding of unified teams in the Olympics.

The delegation was provided with heavy police escort, accommodated at a hotel and with extravagant meals, inciting criticism that Seoul was taking extreme measures to appease Pyongyang.

The conservative opposition’s track record, however, suggests that they are far from innocent in attempting to appease the North.

In the run up to the 2014 Asian Games held in Incheon, the then-ruling Saenuri Party urged the government to consider lifting some sanctions to facilitate the North’s participation. Saenuri Party was disbanded in the wake of former President Park Geun-hye’s corruption scandal, to form Liberty Korea Party.

The now-defunct Saenuri Party, many of whose members are now in the Liberty Korea Party, had also called on the Park administration to “make a magnanimous decision” to bring North Korea to the Asian Games, and that costs should be covered with South Korea’s inter-Korean cooperation fund.

By Choi He-suk (cheesuk@heraldcorp.com)