PyeongChang (South Korea), Feb 22 (IANS) The International Olympic Committee’s Olympic Channel said Thursday it could make the story of the joint Korean women’s ice hockey team at the PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games into a film.

Mark Parkman, general manager of the IOC’s Olympic Channel, said during a press conference that its department is trying to figure out what to do with the story of the unified Korean team that created a buzz at the 23rd Winter Games, reports Yonhap news agency.

“We have been documenting some of that story,” Parkman said during a press conference at the Main Press Centre in PyeongChang, some 180 km east of Seoul.

“We’re still in the stage what we’ll be able to do with it. But we’re hoping that we can put something together.”

The joint women’s ice hockey team of the two Koreas completed its campaign at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics on Tuesday after losing against Sweden in the seventh-place classification event.

South Korea and North Korea established a joint team for women’s hockey at the 2018 Winter Games, with Pyongyang sending 12 players to join Seoul’s 23-member team.

It marked the first time the two had forged a joint team at any Olympics.

Despite political controversies over the joint team of the two Koreas — the two halves of a peninsula that has been divided since 1945 — the players nevertheless played as one throughout the Winter Games.

It lost all five games, but the team still became a symbol of peace and paved the way for potential reconciliation between the Koreas.

The Olympic Channel offers content like news, live sports events, highlights and documentaries related with Olympic Games and Olympians. It was launched in August 2016 and covers sports every day in 11 languages.

The Olympic Channel is set to premiere the first film in its signature documentary series “Five Rings Films”.

The five-episode series will be directed by some of the biggest names in the film industry.

Its first film, “The Nagano Tapes”, which tells the story behind the Czech Republic men’s ice hockey team’s stunning victory at the 1998 Nagano Winter Games, was produced by Frank Marshall, whose production works include famous movie franchises like “Jason Bourne”, “Jurassic World” and “Indiana Jones”.

Parkman, however, said the story of the joint Korean women’s ice hockey team will not be part of the series.

“It will be probably something more bespoke and a little bit shorter,” he said. “We are hoping to have something done in the coming weeks.”

–IANS
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