As preparations accelerate for the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, sporting relations on the divided Korean Peninsula in recent years have seldom appeared more amicable, despite the building nuclear tensions and escalating talk of war.

Last month, North Korea sent its women’s national hockey team to play a match in South Korea and the squads posed together for a photograph. For the first time, South Korea’s women’s soccer team also played in North Korea.

Olympic organizers want to sustain the relatively cordial relations and to curb any threat to the Games, with hopes that North Korea will participate.

The Winter Olympics will take place in February in Pyeongchang, South Korea, about 40 miles from the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea. If any North Korean athletes qualify for the Winter Games — none have so far — plans call for them to travel through the heavily fortified DMZ, in what South Korean officials describe as a gesture of peace.