At the 1999 Women’s World Cup of soccer, held in the United States, the North Koreans once gave a news conference without some key participants: athletes and coaches.) Apart from news media attention, the North Koreans are not so different from any other skaters here at the Nebelhorn Trophy competition. The North Koreans stayed at a hotel outside Philadelphia and were accompanied by a garrulous, disarming owner of a rib joint in Hackensack, N.J. The restaurateur, Robert Egan, was also president of a trade organization seeking to improve relations between the United States and North Korea. In the words of Alexander Johnson, an American skater who watched the North Koreans train on Wednesday night: “They’re just people.”

Source: New York Times September 27, 2017 23:15 UTC