The Voice of America(VOA) reports that a North Korean representative at the International Olympic Committee dismissed the prospects of forming an inter-Korean team for the upcoming winter games in South Korea.

VOA on Tuesday carried its telephone interview with the North Korean IOC member Chang Ung that took place before his departure from the South to the North on Saturday.

Chang told VOA that that the idea of an inter-Korean team is laughable, likening the current cross-border ties to "crawling on thin ice."

He argued that the latest North Korean taekwondo team's visit to the taekwondo championships in the South was not a sporting exchange between the two sides but between the North's International Taekwondo Federation(ITF) and the South's World Taekwondo Federation(WTF).

Chang downplayed rising expectations that sporting exchanges could help improve inter-Korean ties, calling the idea "naive at best and even hopeless at worst."

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