North Korea holds national winter games as it sits out Winter Olympics

North Korea has opened its national winter games, state media reported, as athletes from the reclusive state sit out the Milan Cortina Winter Olympicsafter failing to secure qualification spots.

The 2026 National Winter Games kicked off on Wednesday at the Paektusan area sports village in Samjiyon, a city in the mountains near the Chinese border, the official KCNA news agency said.

Sports clubs from state bodies and major industrial sites are competing in more than 50 events in five winter sports, including ice hockey, figure skating, and skiing, KCNA said.

North Korea failed to secure qualification places in the Winter Olympics in Italy that open on Friday, according to South Korean media and international skating results.

NORTH KOREA'S BEST WINTER OLYMPIC RESULTS

It last took part in a Winter Olympics in the South Korean city of PyeongChang in 2018, when it sent 22 athletes in five sports and used the Games as a stage for a rare diplomatic thaw with the South, which included a joint women's ice hockey team.

Pyongyang sharply limited sports participation overseas during the COVID-19 pandemic and was suspended from the International Olympic Committee until the end of 2022 after deciding not to send a team to the Tokyo Summer Olympics.

North Korea's best Winter Olympic results have come on the ice. It won its first and only silver medal in women's speed skating at Innsbruck in 1964, and claimed a bronze medal in short-track speed skating at the 1992 Albertville Games.

Its best international prospects more recently have centred on pairs figure skating, but its top duo fell short at a final Olympic qualifier event in Beijing last September.

The Samjiyon venue highlights a broader drive by leader Kim Jong Un to develop showcase projects in the area near Mount Paektu, a politically important region that Pyongyang has promoted as a tourism zone and where KCNA said Kim attended the opening of new luxury hotels late last year.