The South waves sticks and dangles footballs at the North

SOUTH KOREANS are unsure precisely how best to respond to the uncertain changes in the regime to the North. A hardline approach to its neighbour has been the official stance ever since the Cheonan, a Southern military corvette, was torpedoed in March. Sanctions, a diplomatic freeze and military exercises with the Americans all suggest that the authorities in Seoul are in no mood to back down.

Yet this week, the South Korean Red Cross said that it would send emergency aid, mostly food and medicine, worth $8.4m to help the North cope with floods. This would be the first aid to flow north since May, but the South’s government insists it is merely a temporary humanitarian measure.

It is still harder to know what to make of a more eccentric offer of a sporting olive branch. An ex-foreign minister and diplomat in the South has proposed that the two Koreas should collaborate in a bid to host the football World Cup. Han Sung-joo, who chairs a committee seeking the return of the event to South Korea in 2022, wants the North to host some matches. He denies an official joint approach is in the works, but suggests that four games could be played north of the 38th parallel, perhaps in Pyongyang’s cavernous May Day stadium. The North has yet to say if it is keen.

In fact there is little, if any, prospect of South Korea winning a bid for the cup so soon after its joint hosting, with Japan, of the 2002 event. Yet Mr Han insists that Sepp Blatter, the president of FIFA, the world football body, was “very responsive” to the idea of involving the North. Jeong Tae-se, the North’s star striker, has also said it would be “beyond our wildest dreams” to see a World Cup match played in North Korea. But that was in May, before his team suffered an inglorious exit from the 2010 cup. Perhaps a similar humiliation for the North Korean team in Pyongyang would suit South Korea’s hawkish strategy after all.