Halmstad (Sweden), May 3 (IANS): The North and South Korean women's table tennis teams were due to face off in the World Championship quarter-finals on Thursday but rather than battling it out they decided to join forces and create a unified team.

Images by an epa photojournalist on the ground showed the grinning athletes happily interacting and posing for the press as they stood together in a line in front of the table instead of playing each other, reports Efe.

Having successfully merged, the now single Korean team rose to the semi-finals, where it is to face whoever emerges from the upcoming match between Ukraine and Japan.

Following the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics, where the two countries also presented a unified team of athletes that competed under the same flag, a thawing in diplomatic relations has started between Pyongyang and Seoul.

On April 27, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in held a historic summit in which they agreed to work to achieve denuclearisation of the peninsula and a peace treaty that would officially end the Korean War which began in 1950.