Ryom Tae-ok and Kim Ju-sik of North Korea are not expected to win a medal in pairs figure skating at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea. But few athletes may have a more impactful presence next month at the Games, which are being promoted as a chance to ease political and nuclear tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula after North Korea announced Tuesday that it would participate in the Games.

The pairs team, which finished 15th at the world skating championships last year, is expected to represent the height of sporting aspirations for North Korea. Details are still being worked out about which athletes will compete, but Ryom, who will turn 19 just days before the Olympics begin, and Kim, who is 25, are the only North Koreans who have qualified for the 2018 Games.

They are the lone elite, world-class winter athletes from the isolated nation, which has only won two medals at the Winter Games, a silver and bronze in speedskating, the last coming in 1992, and they have plenty of admirers among figure skating’s cognoscenti.

“They are so charismatic; I know the crowd would fall for them with their smile and passion and love of skating,” Bruno Marcotte, a prominent Canadian pairs coach who worked with the skaters last summer in Montreal and during an Olympic qualifying competition in Germany in September, said by phone on Tuesday. “I feel they’ll be a crowd favorite.”