SK opens high-speed line to Winter Games

Emblazoned with a tiger and a bear – the mascots of the 2018 Winter Olympic Games and Paralympic Games – a blue and white highspeed train rolled out of Seoul station Friday as a new line to the venues opened to the public.

The railway cuts travel times significantly, reaching Jinbu – the station for snow sports at the Pyeongchang Games – in one hour and 20 minutes from Seoul, and another 16 minutes to Gangneung on the east coast, where ice events will take place.

During the Games 51 trains will operate a day on the 278-kilometer line, which starts from Incheon airport southwest of the capital, with a total capacity of 20,910 passengers. The new railway is part of South Korea’s KTX network.

Previously travelers from Seoul to Pyeongchang have mostly had to go by road – around a three-hour drive.

Many other Olympic Games and major sporting events have had trouble preparing infrastructure, with dashes to complete stadiums and other facilities in time, but in South Korea the process has been highly competent.

On Thursday, marking 50 days to go before the opening ceremony, the Games’ chief organiser Lee Hee-beom said, “We are very proud of what we have created in Pyeongchang and the efficiency with which the venues and infrastructure have been built.

“We have worked hard over the last seven years to make our dream a reality and now the international sports festival is within reach for us all.”

Even so the Games remain overshadowed by tensions with the nuclear-armed North Korea, and the Russian national team has been banned over accusations of state-sponsored doping.

“The Olympic Games is a big event and if an international problem happens it will worry many people,” Seoul resident Ahn Ju-young said at the station Friday before boarding the train.

Ticket sales have picked up, with 586,300 tickets sold as of December 10 – the latest figures available from the organizers – or 49.7 percent of the total 1.18 million available.