Pyeongchang 2018: Did the 'Peace Olympics' bring harmony?

Before they had even started, these games were being described as the "Peace Olympics".

In an opening ceremony heavy with symbolism, they formed a giant dove of peace from flickering candlelight, and athletes from the two Koreas marched together under a unified flag.

The theme was said to be peace and harmony.

Later, a member of the Olympic Committee said the joint Korean women's hockey team should be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

But as the Olympic flame goes out, and the North Korean cheer squad heads home, we should perhaps weigh up how much of this euphoria is likely to stick around.

Calling them the "Peace Olympics" may be taking it a little far, and ditto for the Nobel Prize, but this was at least a peaceful Olympics, and that in itself is no small feat given where we were.

Just a few months ago, there were concerns about whether it would even be safe for athletes and spectators to travel to Pyeongchang - 40 miles from the world's most heavily militarised border, and not long after North Korea's most powerful nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests to date.

The games end with high-level contact between North and South Korea resumed, their military hotline restored, and talks underway towards the first inter-Korean summit in a decade.

This can only make what had been an increasingly dangerous situation safer.

These Olympics have also brought some much-needed breathing space, and a chance for all sides, if not to take a step back from the precipice, at least to pause in the march towards it.

It is now more than two months since North Korea's last missile launch, with the start of annual US-South Korean military exercises, which always trigger a furious response from Pyongyang, similarly pushed back until after the end of the Olympic truce.

All this has not been without personal risk for South Korea's President Moon Jae-In.

His approval rating was hit hard by the decision to form the unified hockey team, particularly among the younger generation that helped elect him, who have grown up with little emotional attachment to the North and less interest in reunification, more concern about the economy and being treated fairly.

Elsewhere, critics accuse him of allowing the Kim regime to turn these games into the "propaganda Olympics" and to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington.

And what has not changed, and no amount of ice hockey can resolve, are the fundamental tensions underneath.

Kim Jong Un shows no sign of voluntarily giving up the nuclear weapons he tells his people they need to survive, and which he appears to believe will prevent him from ending his days like Muammar Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein.

South Korea and the US say they cannot live with a nuclear-armed North Korea, and future talks must be aimed towards denuclearisation.

So we should be realistic about the prospects for an imminent breakthrough, and how much 16 days of sport can achieve.

But we are at least now talking about talking, and that is preferable to talking about military action, which is where this seemed to be heading.