Athletes from both North and South Korea formed a combined Korean women's team at the World Team Table Tennis Championships on Thursday.

The two Korean women's teams were slated to meet in the quarterfinals, but after consulting with the International Table Tennis Federation, the two delegations decided to form a united team, which automatically advanced to the semifinals.

When the athletes appeared on court, the public address system announced that there was no North and no South, but Korea. Instead of matches, the players from each nation smiled and stood together on court.

Word of the agreement had reached players on Tuesday, but a member of the South Korean team, Yang Ha Eun said the athletes were poised for their quarterfinal clash until the agreement was confirmed.

(A unified Korean women's team will now head to the semifinals.)

"Because there was no confirmation, we had to keep preparing to play them," Yang said.

In the semifinals, the Korea team will play the winner of the quarterfinal between Ukraine and Japan.

"Until now, table tennis has been involved in the push for world peace, and this is the fruit of that effort," said Ichiro Hoshino, the executive director of the Japan Table Tennis Association.

According to the ITTF website, it is the first time the two Koreas have formed a joint table tennis team since the 1991 world championships in Chiba, when the unified team won the women's championship. The united victory formed the basis of the story for the 2012 South Korean dramatic film "As One."

In February, a united Korea women's ice hockey team competed at the Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Last Friday, the leaders of the two nations met in a historic summit and proclaimed a new era of peace had arrived on the Korean Peninsula.