Games chief: North Korea attack fears an exaggeration

With little more than 100 days to go before the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, chief organiser Lee Hee-beom has dismissed fears of a potential attack by the nuclear-armed North as an “exaggeration”.

Several countries have expressed concerns about the Pyeongchang Games, which will take place in February just 80km from the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) which divides the Korean peninsula.

North Korea carried out its sixth nuclear test in September – by far its most powerful yet – and has lobbed missiles over Japan into the Pacific, while trading insults and threats of war with Washington.

But Games chief Hee-beom said that worries about a possible attack on Pyeongchang were overblown, and although contingency plans are in place, he does not believe they will be needed.

“Korea was not divided yesterday, Korea was divided since 1945,” the president of the Pyeongchang Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (POCOG) said in an interview.

The South has held several “very safe and secure sports events”, he said. “Pyeongchang is not the exception,” he added, calling fears of an attack “a kind of exaggeration”.

France, Germany and Austria have raised concerns over the safety of their athletes during the Games, while Britain has drawn up evacuation plans in case of an emergency.

The International Olympic Committee moved to quash speculation that the event could be cancelled or moved by pledging their “full support” to the Games at a summit last week.

Hee-beom pointed to previous major sporting events in the country, such as the 1988 Seoul summer Olympics and the 2002 World Cup, that passed off without a hitch – the latter despite a clash between the navies of North and South off the island of Yeonpyeong.

The United Nations will also pass an Olympic truce resolution in November calling for a cessation of conflicts before and during the Games, he added.

Hee-beom spoke in his office in Pyeongchang before flying to Greece to collect the Olympic flame, kindled from the sun’s rays at the ancient temple of Hera in Olympia.

The flame will arrive in South Korea today – 100 days before the opening ceremony – before being taken on a 2,018km relay through the country.

Whether the North will participate in the Games in Pyeongchang remains open to question.