TOKYO — South Korea’s scrappy women’s ice hockey team has worked hard to earn an underdog’s right to challenge bigger, more experienced opponents at the Winter Olympics starting next month in Pyeongchang.

But after years of effort to build unity among the players, the South Korean team is frustrated at suddenly being made a pawn in a geopolitical drama: In a grand gesture of sports diplomacy, the North and South Korean governments agreed last week to field a joint women’s ice hockey team at the Winter Games.

While the South Korean government views the inter-Korean team as a steppingstone to talks that could slow down the North’s nuclear program, the South Korean players say they are dismayed by the last-minute decision to insert North Korean players onto the team roster.

“All of us had to give up something in our lives, but we’ve been striving toward one goal: to play in the Olympics,” starting goalie Shin So-jung told the newspaper Chosun Ilbo on Friday. “We could bear it all because we’re proud to represent our country. That’s why we feel so devastated now.”