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How Larry Nassar's Abuse Went On For So Long

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NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks with John Barr, who’s been covering the Larry Nassar sex abuse scandal for ESPN, about the structures and people that enabled Nassar’s behavior.

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

This past week, the more than 160 women and girls who were abused by former gymnastics Dr. Larry Nassar saw justice served. But while he has been sentenced to up to 175 years in prison, many questions remain. How could these horrific assaults go on for so long? And who turned a blind eye? A warning to our listeners – some parts of this discussion are upsetting and graphic. John Barr’s been reporting on these questions for ESPN’s “Outside The Lines” and on the structures that may have protected Nassar at USA Gymnastics and at Michigan State, where Nassar operated his sports medicine practice. John Barr joins us now. Thank you so much.

JOHN BARR: My pleasure.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: So I think the question on everyone’s mind is, how was Nassar allowed to keep working and getting referrals? There were investigations over the years. There was even a Title IX investigation at Michigan State. Athletes began telling officials at the school about the abuse beginning in 1997. And yet here we are.

BARR: The reality is this man was surrounded by a network of enablers for more than a quarter century. It began when he first started as an athletic trainer back in the late ’80s. And it went all the way up until he was caught back in September of 2016. Of course, we all know now Rachael Denhollander was the first woman to publicly accuse him of sexual assault during a medical exam. And her report led to a flood of similar complaints.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Right – use this word a network of enablers. Does that mean that there were people who knew what he was doing and helped him? Or does it mean that there were people who simply did not believe the evidence that they were presented with?

BARR: I think it’s both. Take one example – John Geddert, the head coach of the 2012 U.S. Olympic team. John Geddert and Larry Nassar were inseparable.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah, I think a former athlete described them as the perfect storm.

BARR: Yeah, because the gymnastics world, when you get to the elite level, is so incredibly demanding. And these young women – young girls, really – are pushed to the limit. They get injured. But they also get broken down mentally. And John Geddert was recently suspended by USA Gymnastics. You know, we know that he was reported for assault and battery. But we also know that he allowed Larry Nassar in the backroom of his first gym, Great Lakes Gymnastics, in the ’80s, and then his gym that he recently was suspended from, Twistars, for more than 25 years. It wasn’t just…

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Does he say that he knows?

BARR: Well, the – one of the plaintiffs has alleged that she was being digitally penetrated in the backroom of Twistars and that John Geddert walked in when it was happening. And the young woman had just a towel draped over her as Larry Nassar was performing this, quote, unquote, “procedure.” And John Geddert made a comment that her back must really be hurting.

Now, does she definitively know that Geddert knew what was happening to her at the time? No, she does not go to that level. But there were a number of gymnasts who reported Geddert for assault. And oftentimes, it was Larry Nassar who would step in and vouch for him at those moments when his profession – when Geddert’s professional career was in jeopardy.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: They were covering up for each other, essentially.

BARR: They were covering up for each other, essentially.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: It’s alleged.

BARR: It is what’s been alleged. But it’s sort of symbolic of how Larry Nassar’s career went.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah. I’d like to look at something else. During the FBI investigation, some victims and families were apparently asked to keep quiet by Steve Penny, the president and CEO of USA Gymnastics at the time.

BARR: Yeah, that’s right. We know that in June of 2015, Maggie Nichols was speaking with Aly Raisman – who’s been on two gold medal-winning teams – at the Karolyi Ranch. Maggie Nichols’ coach overheard, and they were talking about what was going on during the exams with Larry Nassar. And the coach, Sarah Jantzi, was concerned enough that she reported it to USA Gymnastics.

It was more than a year before the FBI actually got around to interviewing many of these gymnasts. So the big question is, when USA Gymnastics finally did go to the FBI, what did USA Gymnastics report to the FBI? Because if they reported that young women were being abused during medical exams, well, you would think that the FBI would jump all over that.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Right.

BARR: But that’s not what happened.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: How does all of what we know add up to an ingrained system that protected Nassar, as opposed to young athletes? The support and encouragement to trust this man was so widespread that some of the abuse even occurred while parents were in the room.

BARR: Yeah, and it’s pretty chilling to hear young women and their parents describe that. He was very adept at grooming not only the young women but their parents. And he would position his body in such a way and drape a – oftentimes, a sheet or a towel over the gymnast or other young women that he was treating in such a way that the parent couldn’t get a full view of what it is he was doing. And many of these survivors are – were young women who had never had a sexual experience.

They’re in there with a doctor who’s got walls plastered with Olympic memorabilia. So their sense was, surely, this can’t be sexual because my mom’s in the room, you know? That’s how they processed it at the time. And frankly, many of these women didn’t really fully come to understand this as abuse until late 2016, when Larry Nassar’s name was plastered all over the news.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: And coaches were telling them that these were legitimate procedures.

BARR: That’s right. But, you know, I’ve interviewed four women who reported Larry Nassar to either athletic trainers or coaches at Michigan State in the late ’90s. Under the Michigan reporting laws, they are mandated reporters. They’re mandated to report sex abuse, and they didn’t.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: We’ve just seen the board of USA Gymnastics be forced to resign. Who’s left in place that is under the cloud of suspicion?

BARR: Well, Kerry Perry is the new president and CEO of USA Gymnastics. She took over from Steve Penny, who was – who left the position after much criticism for the way he handled this. There’s going to be all new faces at USA Gymnastics. And – but, you know, the reality is this. You know, you can implement every policy you want implemented. If it’s not followed, if it’s not policed, you know, this could happen again.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: John Barr, reporter for ESPN, thank you so much.

BARR: You’re welcome.

Copyright © 2018 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Nassar's Exploitation Of The Climate Of Fear At A USA Gymnastics Training Site

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Olympic gold medalist Dominique Moceanu, an early critic of abusive behavior in the USA gymnastics program, talks to NPR’s Michel Martin about recent reporting on the sport’s widespread sexual abuse.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

This week marked an important moment in the ongoing story about the sexual abuse inflicted upon some of the country’s elite female athletes. By now, you’ve probably heard that Larry Nassar, the former Michigan State and USA Gymnastics doctor, was handed a sentence of up to 175 years in prison for sexually abusing young patients, patients who were required to see him as part of their training. Others have been forced to resign or fired. USA Gymnastics recently announced that the gym run by Bela and Martha Karolyi, where the victims alleged some of the abuse took place, will no longer be used to train Olympic contenders.

In the wake of this, some are wondering how this could all have happened without anybody knowing or intervening. But some in the sport have spoken about the kind of environment that could allow this to happen. Dominique Moceanu is one of them. She is a former gymnast and the youngest American to win an Olympic gold medal. And she has long been a critic of the Karolyis and their training methods. She even wrote about all this back in 2012 in her memoir called “Off Balance.” She’s with us now via Skype from her home in Cleveland. Dominique Moceanu, thank you so much for speaking with us.

DOMINIQUE MOCEANU: Thank you so much for having me.

MARTIN: Forgive me, I do have to ask. Did you experience the kind of mistreatment – sexual misconduct under the guise of medical treatment that has now been revealed?

MOCEANU: No, I was not a victim of Dr. Nassar’s. And more importantly, now he’s inmate Nassar because I don’t consider him a doctor at all but more a master manipulator. So no, I was not a victim of his, but I applaud all the women who have come forward so courageously to share their stories. Because if the world did not hear them one by one by one, they may not have believed how egregious these acts of manipulation were and how vulnerable young children were in the arms of this really toxic environment and this prolific pedophile.

MARTIN: Well, I do want to ask you about the environment, specifically at the Karolyi Ranch, because you were coached by them intensely – personally by them. So could you talk a little bit about the environment that you described?

MOCEANU: Well, the environment at the Karolyi Ranch is a place where I know very well. And I lived there before the Summer Olympic Games in 1996, and it holds some of my darkest and worst memories of training. It was a very cold place. It’s not welcoming. The expectations I have no problem with – discipline and respect and hard work. I’m all for those things. But what they had there was fear, intimidation tactics, shaming tactics. If you didn’t go along with everything that they wanted you to and what wanted you to do, well, you were blacklisted immediately. You may not be put on an Olympic team.

And that fear is what did not allow so many young gymnasts to speak up when they were being abused because some of them didn’t even recognize it was abuse initially. So the abuse became normalized. And Nassar knew and saw the abuses take place not only with the Karolyis but at the gym with John Geddert in Michigan at Twist Stars. He knew the psychological abuses, and he took an oath to do no harm. And he was exploiting the abuses for his own personal pleasure on top of it.

MARTIN: Why do you think it’s taken so long, though, to get attention to this issue? Obviously, the sexual misconduct is a crime but also this kind of closed environment, this attitude of you can’t question authority. You can’t say anything. You’re not, you know, not allowed to speak about it. Why do you think it’s taken so long to get attention for this?

MOCEANU: It’s taken so long because it took countless courageous women to come forward for people to believe. It took Dr. Nassar – inmate Nassar, correctly speaking – it took his child pornography and for him to get arrested, first of all, to start getting more attention paid on this. We have to give credit to the investigative journalists at the Indy Star. They broke the story of abuse and they stayed on it. They got a lot of heat for it, but they stayed on it. And then the next step was kind of all of the women little by little coming forward and then all of them forward.

MARTIN: The practices that you described, the kind of the demeaning the athlete, you know, this kind of toxic environment, do you think that’s changing?

MOCEANU: I absolutely see it changing because it has to. Look at the attention worldwide this has received. I mean, right now, it’s an embarrassment to our sport. And it’s a humiliation to the powers that be and who ran our sport. And if any coach thinks they’re getting away with this in the future, you have another thing coming to you because it’s not going to happen. And a lot of eyes are going to be much more serious and watching the behavior of coaches. I mean, there wasn’t an inmate Nassar just because he was super clever.

Sure, he was a master manipulator, but there were also a lot of people who helped him. You have John Geddert, who allowed him a private room in his gym club. There was – the Karolyi Ranch was the perfect breed for a prolific pedophile. He got to go unchecked. And there is also the institutions who never reported any instances of sexual abuse. They brushed it under the rug. So that arrogance is what got us here. There were a lot of enablers. And now we have to hold people accountable. So for me, I just want the healing for these young women. I want everyone to heal. And I want to get rid of all of the abusers. So one by one, they better be careful because we’re coming after you.

MARTIN: That was Dominique Moceanu. She is the youngest American ever to win a gold medal in gymnastics, which she did in 1996. I want you to know that we reached out several times to the Karolyis for comment, but we have not heard back.

Copyright © 2018 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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State AG: Michigan State University Under Investigation In Ongoing Nassar Fallout

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Michigan Attorney General announced on Saturday his office is launching an investigation into Michigan State University’s handling of the sex abuse scandal. Disgraced sports doctor Larry Nassar is seen here as a victim gives her impact statement during his sentencing hearing on Jan. 24 in Lansing, Mich.

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Carlos Osorio/AP

The Larry Nassar sex abuse scandal has now more fully ensnared Michigan State University, where the disgraced USA Gymnastics doctor — who has admitted to abusing multiple women and girls in his care — worked for two decades.

In a scathing press conference on Saturday, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, who is running for governor, said, “It is abundantly clear that a full and complete investigation of what happened at Michigan State University from the president’s office down, is required.” The probe will seek to uncover “who knew what and when, who took action, who failed to take action,” Schuette said.

He added that, “No individual and no department at Michigan State University is off-limits.”

The scandal has already enveloped and toppled some of those in Nassar’s sphere with dizzying speed.

On Wednesday, hours after Nassar was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison, MSU President Lou Anna Simon announced she is stepping down. Two days later, the school’s athletic director announced his retirement. That same day, the entire board of USA Gymnastics said they too would resign.

And yet the dozens of women and girls who accuse Nassar of abuse say that a culture of fear, silence and permissiveness allowed the molestation to go on for far too long.

Olympic gold medalist McKayla Maroney wrote in a victim impact statement that Nassar began molesting her at the age of 13 or 14 and didn’t stop until she left the sport at age 20.

“How could Larry Nassar have been allowed to assault so many women and girls for more than two decades?” she wrote.

“The answer to that question lies in the failure of not one, but three major institutions to stop him — with Michigan State University, USA Gymnastics and the United States Olympic Committee.”

In 2014, Nassar was the subject of an MSU sexual assault investigation, after a woman brought a complaint against him. The school reportedly told the woman that his treatments were not sexual. And yet an unredacted version of MSU’s report found that Nassar’s behavior was “frankly troubling,” reports Michigan Radio. Still, the school permitted him to stay on and continue treating patients, albeit with a nurse in the room, until 2016 when numerous accusations against him were made public. Several women say they were assaulted after his 2014 reinstatement.

Maroney was among more than 150 women and girls who testified against Nassar. Schuette said it was their leadership and courage that “opened the eyes of the world to the horrific sexual predator at MSU named Larry Nassar.”

Caitlin DeLuca, a senior at the University, told Michigan Radio’s Rebecca Kruth that anger has been widespread across campus this week, with the ire largely aimed at administrators.

“The way that it’s been handled from the top down has let so many students down,” DeLuca said. “And it’s made us lose complete confidence and faith in our administration and in our university.”

The MSU Board of Trustees had asked Schuette to investigate. In a letter last week quoted in The Lansing State Journal, the board said the university believes, “The evidence will show that no MSU official believed Nassar committed sexual abuse prior to newspaper reports in late summer 2016.”

On Saturday, Schuette said he doesn’t want to hear from board members.

“Frankly they should be the last ones providing advice, given their conduct throughout the entire episode.”

Now board members themselves are fielding calls to step down.

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USOC Tells USA Gymnastics' Board To Resign Within 6 Days

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The entire USA Gymnastics board will resign, the group says. Rachael Denhollander (center) listens as Larry Nassar, a former team USA Gymnastics doctor, was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison for sexual abuse over decades of his involvement with the program.

Brendan McDermid/Reuters

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USA Gymnastics’ board must resign, the U.S. Olympic Committee says, or it will lose its certification as a national governing body. The deadline is Jan. 31 — one week from the day disgraced team doctor Larry Nassar was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison for abusing more than 150 gymnasts.

In response, USA Gymnastics said it “completely embraces the requirements” set by the USOC late Thursday. The entire board’s resignation is the top item on a list of mandatory changes that the USOC sent to USA Gymnastics on Thursday.

Informing USA Gymnastics of the required resignations, USOC CEO Scott Blackmun cited the “shocking and tragic stories surrounding Larry Nassar’s years-long abuse of vulnerable athletes.” In the letter he sent to the gymnastics organization, he added, “We must take further action to ensure that it cannot happen again.”

Both the USOC and USA Gymnastics have faced harsh criticism amid revelations about the systematic abuse that Nassar carried out, with victims and others saying the two organizations didn’t do enough to support athletes and prevent abuse.

Some of the most powerful criticism has come from decorated gymnast Aly Raisman, who delivered an impact statement at Nassar’s sentencing hearing.

“The Indy Star story broke on August 4, 2016, after survivors courageously came forward sharing stories of sexual abuse and alleging organizational mishandling,” Raisman said via Twitter earlier this week. “The next day, the USOC said they wouldn’t investigate (and even praised USAG’s work in the area of sexual abuse.)”

Raisman also called for accountability. Discussing the army of survivors who spoke out against Nassar in court, she said: “Many of them, myself included, claim the USOC is also at fault. Was the USOC there to ‘focus on supporting the brave survivors?’ No. Did they issue any statement then? Crickets …”

The new letter from Blackmun and the USOC details changes that he had outlined in an open letter to all U.S. athletes on the day Nassar was sentenced. In that letter, Blackmun had said that the women and girls’ testimony had “framed the tragedy through the eyes of the victims and survivors, and was worse than our own worst fears.”

“It was powerful because of the strength of the victims, survivors and parents, who so eloquently and forcefully told their stories and so rightfully demanded justice,” Blackmun wrote. “The USOC should have been there to hear it in person, and I am deeply sorry that did not happen.”

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Toward the end of his note, Blackmun said that gymnasts who were abused by Nassar may want to ask their doctors “whether to seek tests for STDs or other possible conditions, such as the HPV virus, that could possibly result from sexual assault.”

Three USA Gymnastics board members resigned at the start of this week: chairman Paul Parilla, vice chairman Jay Binder and treasurer Bitsy Kelley. The organization’s president and CEO, Kerry Perry, has been in that job since December. She replaced Steve Penny, who resigned last March.

In demanding the board’s mass resignation, Blackmun said he wasn’t accusing individual people at USA Gymnastics of wrongdoing, but that the entire board needed to leave as part of wholesale changes.

The USOC said that USA Gymnastics should have an interim board in place by the end of February. It’s also requiring all staff and board members to undergo SafeSport training — a program that aims to foster safe and respectful environments for athletes and teams and that the USOC has previously used to respond to sexual abuse cases.

By invoking SafeSport, the USOC is adding another echo of an earlier sexual abuse scandal, one that centered on USA Swimming. The training program was initially created after reports emerged in 2010 of coaches molesting underage female swimmers, with, as NPR reported, “some of the abuse continuing for years without punishment.”

SafeSport was mentioned by another Nassar survivor, McKayla Maroney, who filed a complaint against the former doctor, USAG, and the USOC last month. In that complaint, she said, “Despite only instituting these SafeSport policies in 2012, Defendant USOC was acutely aware of the ravages of sexual abuse posed to minors in amateur sports, for at least a decade prior to this SafeSport program being created.”

Maroney, a medalist at the 2012 Summer Games, went public in December, when she said that U.S. gymnastics’ governing body had her sign a confidentiality agreement about Nassar one year earlier — months after the case began making headlines with women and girls recounting the abuse they endured.

Noting that SafeSport has policies to identify sexual predators’ “grooming” behaviors, Maroney said in her lawsuit that the USOC had allowed Nassar to continue to work with minors “and failed to adequately enforce these policies, or mandate that USAG enforce these policies.”

In its letter to USAG, the U.S. Olympic Committee said that in addition to training and awareness, the gymnastics body must work to reshape itself and change its culture. But some athletes have said the problem extends upward: Maroney said in her suit, “USOC has a culture of ignoring its own internal rules and mandates … in order to protect its reputation and blind itself to known abusers.”

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Ex-USA Gymnastics Doctor Sentenced; Michigan State President Resigns

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A judge sentenced Larry Nassar to 175 years in prison after more than 150 victims spoke at his proceedings. And, the president of Michigan State University, where Nassar also worked, resigned.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Wednesday was the day of judgment for Larry Nassar. A judge sentenced the former USA Gymnastics doctor to up to 175 years in prison. She said, you’ve done nothing to deserve to walk outside a prison again. The judge allowed statements by many of Nassar’s more than 150 victims, any who wanted to speak.

Wednesday was also a day of accountability for the president of Michigan State University, where Nassar also worked. President Lou Anna Simon resigned. Michigan Radio reporter Kate Wells has been covering this story for more than a year. She’s on the line.

Good morning.

KATE WELLS, BYLINE: Hey, Steve.

INSKEEP: Can you work us through the timeline here? When did victims start reporting crimes by Larry Nassar so far as you know?

WELLS: More than 20 years ago, according to these women and girls. We know that multiple women and girls say they have been talking to their MSU coaches, trainers, staff. We heard from one of them in court this week, Larissa Boyce. She says she told her MSU gymnastics coach that Nassar’s so-called treatments were becoming sexual. This was back in 1997.

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LARISSA BOYCE: I told somebody. I told an adult. Instead of being protected, I was humiliated, I was in trouble and brainwashed into believing that I was the problem.

WELLS: And we know that from an administrative standpoint, this school launched a 2014 Title IX investigation against Nassar. But that investigation ended up clearing Nassar at the time and letting him go back to work, even as a separate MSU Police investigation against Nassar continued for more than a year. And we know that Nassar assaulted more than a dozen girls during that time.

INSKEEP: OK. So Lou Anna Simon was not university president when these reports began coming in. But was…

WELLS: Right.

INSKEEP: …The university president from 2004 onward. When, so far as you know, did she learn how bad this was?

WELLS: During – at least, we know that she heard about the 2014 investigation. And she says she told the school to play it straight. But the anger towards her has really been building over this last year and a half. She has been seen as kind of tone deaf on this. At one point, she told victims that it would have been impossible to stop a determined sexual predator like Nassar. In her resignation letter last night even, she said, as tragedies are politicized, blame is inevitable. As president, it is only natural that I am the focus of this anger.

So victims feel like they’re not really feeling, even now, accountability from MSU.

INSKEEP: Wait a minute. She’s not saying, I’m responsible for what happened, and I have to take ultimate responsibility because I’m the top person. She’s saying, I just want to avoid a political fight.

WELLS: She’s certainly saying, you know, I’m really sorry to victims that this happened. But no, nothing in terms of – look, we could have done this better, and we really messed this up.

INSKEEP: Does Michigan State University face further investigation?

WELLS: Definitely. MSU is now under open investigations by the NCAA, the state attorney general, and they’re facing more than a hundred civil lawsuits in court.

INSKEEP: Kate, thanks very much.

WELLS: Thanks, Steve.

INSKEEP: Kate Wells of Michigan Radio.

(SOUNDBITE OF VETIVER’S “STRANGER STILL”)

Copyright © 2018 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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North Korean Women's Hockey Players Arrive To Begin Olympic Training With South

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North Korean female hockey players arrive at the Inter-Korean Transit Office in Paju, South Korea, on Thursday.

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Twelve members of the North Korean women’s ice hockey team have crossed the heavily fortified border to begin training with their South Korean counterparts ahead of next month’s Olympics in Pyeongchang.

Wearing red, white and blue team parkas emblazoned with the North Korean flag and “DPR Korea” on their backs, the women arrived on Thursday after the rival countries agreed to field a joint team at the games for the first-time ever.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, quoting the South’s unification ministry, says that an eight-member delegation from the North’s sports ministry was also arriving on Thursday.

The joint team will march under a unification flag at the Olympics’ opening ceremony. NPR’s Bill Chappell says, “South Korea’s athletes have previously marched alongside their North Korean counterparts at several Olympics, including the 2000 and 2004 Summer Olympics in Sydney and Athens, respectively, as well as the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin.”

On Saturday, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) agreed to allow the 12 North Korean players to join South Korea’s 23-member team. However, the move has been met with criticism because it will mean less time on the ice for the South’s players.

Sarah Murray, the South Korean team coach, said Monday that it was a “tough situation to have our team used for political purposes.” She conceded, however, “it’s kind of something that’s bigger than ourselves right now.”

As NPR’s Elise Hu reported earlier this week, many South Koreans have also expressed their dismay with joining Pyongyang in the games, reporting, “In Seoul, protesters Monday set fire to the North Korean flag and a photo of Kim Jong Un. The South Korean president’s approval rating has dropped in recent days as well.”

In a gesture that seemed certain to be received with even more skepticism, North Korea’s state media called for “all Koreans at home and abroad” to make a “breakthrough” for unification of the divided peninsula without outside interference. It said military drills with “outside forces” as being unhelpful – an apparent reference to joint U.S.-South Korea war games that have raised the ire of Pyongyang in the past.

KCNA said Koreans should “promote contact, travel, cooperation between North and South Korea” and that Pyongyang would “smash” any efforts by outside forces to block reunification.

The breakthrough over the Olympics came after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said in his New Year’s address that he would be open to it. At North-South talks that followed, the two sides reached agreement on the joint team, as well as the reinstatement of a hotline between the two sides and other dialogue aimed at easing tensions.

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