THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

As the Olympics ends, North Korea and South Korea go back to being two seperate countries with their own flags and governments. In spite of that old stick up his ass Pence it was a good time.

The 23rd Winter Olympics came to a festive close on Sunday, with athletes from the two Koreas marching into the cold stadium together, but wearing different uniforms and waving the flags of their own countries.

Although some athletes also carried flags showing a unified peninsula, the fact that so many were carrying distinct national flags was a pungent sign that the truce between North and South Korea that had marked these Olympic Games might already be dissipating.

The 22 North Korean athletes — as well as the hundreds of cheerleaders and security minders who accompanied them — will now depart for home across the heavily fortified border that divides the two nations.

But even before the closing ceremony began, the hiatus from the nuclear crisis that the Olympics had offered was clearly ending. On Friday, Mr. Trump announced harsh new sanctions against North Korea. And hours before the ceremony began on Sunday, a spokesman from the North’s Foreign Ministry described the sanctions as an act of war even as Mr. Moon met with the North Korean delegation Sunday afternoon.

After that meeting, and shortly after the Olympic ceremony began, the presidential palace said in a statement that North Korea had indicated it was willing to talk to the United States. But differences are wide, and only the coming weeks and months will show whether the Olympic diplomacy has had a lasting effect.

There were highlights aplenty. South Korea broke out in a frenzy over curling as its women’s team racked up one surprising win after another, all the way to a silver medal. Chloe Kim, 17, the Korean-American snowboarder, astonished judges and crowds with a near-perfect gold medal run on the halfpipe.

Esther Ledecka of the Czech Republic became the first woman to win a gold medal in two sports in a single Winter Games, while Yuzuru Hanyu, the men’s figure skating champion from Japan, returned after a four-month hiatus because of an ankle injury and captured his second consecutive Olympic gold medal. After a spine tingling shootout, the American women’s ice hockey team beat Canada to win the gold medal for the first time in two decades.

Norway dominated the medals table, collecting 39 over all, 14 of them gold. The United States won 23 medals, and South Korea 17.

North Korea never made it to the medal podium. The only athletes to qualify for the Olympics on merit, Ryom Tae-ok, 19, and Kim Ju-sik, 25, placed 13th in the pairs figure skating. All the other athletes in the North’s delegation placed last or near the bottom in their events.

And the unified Korean women’s ice hockey team, the only team to include North and South Korean athletes on its roster, lost all five of the games they played at the Olympics.

But perhaps the most important achievement of the Pyeongchang Games was that they were peaceful. In his speech at the closing ceremony, Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, thanked the athletes from South Korea and North Korea.

“You have shown how sports bring people together in our very fragile world,” he said.

The possibilities of talks between the US and North Korea raise the specter of another international giveaway by the Great Orange Peckerhead. With a decimated State Department bereft of so much knowledge and experience and the World's Lousiest Negotiator overseeing any talks, this is probably the best time for Kim Jong Pudge to get any positive deal. And the Great Orange Peckerhead can always rely on his friend Putin to help.