June 01, 2018
Three members of Iran’s women’s table tennis (ping-pong) national team are in Pyongyang, North Korean to train for the 2019 World Championships scheduled to take place in early October in Budapest, Hungary.
Team captain Neda Shahsavari, players Parinaz Hajilou and Meyad Lotfil, and their coach Nasim Ranjbar will be training with members of the North Korean men and women national teams between June 4 and 14 at a camp in Pyongyang.
“Iranian and North Korean officials organized the joint training camp during the 2018 World Championships in Halmstad, Sweden,” the chairman of the Iran Table Tennis Federation, Mehrdad Qardashi, said.
Ping pong is popular in China, Japan and both North and South Korea.
The exchange of ping-pong players between the U.S. and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the early 1970s paved the way for the visit of President Richard Nixon to Beijing, and marked a new chapter in the Sino-American relationship. President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger ‘s initiative came to be known as Ping-Pong Diplomacy.
