South Korean president declares Olympics in his country a success
South Korean President Moon Jae-in declares Pyeongchang Games a success
PYEONGCHANG, South Korea – About halfway through the 2018 Winter Olympics, President Moon Jae-in made a surprise visit to this host city to briefly meet with the international media, catch some short-track speedskating and declare the Games a smashing success.
There were four days left in the quadrennial competition, so Moon’s ebullience might be a bit premature. But it is understandable.
Months before the start of the Olympics, the South Korean president was just trying to avert disaster as tensions between North Korea and the United States deepened, ticket sales lagged and France threatened to skip the Games entirely because of security concerns.
But time, and an 11th-hour decision by the North to participate in the Games, melted Moon and South Korea’s deepest anxieties.
“This has been a very successful Olympics,” Moon crowed. “We’ve achieved many of the goals that we set out to achieve.”
Indeed, there are a few Olympic triumphs for Moon to count.
North Korea leader Kim Jong Un dispatched 22 athletes to compete under a unified flag with the South as well as an invitation to Kim to travel to the North for talks. Organizers say they’ve been able to sell all but a few tickets to the Games even though there appear to be plenty of empty seats at most competitions. And IOC officials say more than
300 million around the globe watched at least some of the competition.
The Games themselves have also provided no shortage of sporting drama.
Japan’s figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu made history when he became the first athlete to win back-to-back gold in the men’s individual competition in 66 years. Canada’s Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir set a world record in the ice dance short program. Team USA teen snowboarders Chloe Kim and Red Gerard, both only 17, burnished a place in American’s hearts with their gold medal performances.
With an estimated cost of about
$13 billion, the Pyeongchang Games’ final tab is projected to cost a fraction of the whopping $51 billion that was spent on the 2014 Sochi Games.
Still, it might be years before South Koreans can accurately gauge whether the 2018 Olympics were worth the trouble and whether the Olympic détente will lead to substantive engagement by the Kim regime.
Moon is hopeful the thaw can lead to de-escalation of nuclear tensions and eventually direct talks between North Korea and the United States. The North Koreans dangled the possibility of meeting with Vice President Pence on the sidelines of the Olympics, but the North walked away at the last minute, the vice president’s chief of staff Nick Ayers revealed Wednesday.
Many South Koreans remain skeptical that Moon’s Olympic diplomacy can move Kim to give up his nuclear program — what the Trump administration calls non-negotiable for the U.S. to go along with lifting sanctions against the regime.
“The Olympics have changed nothing,” said Kenny Cho, who traveled from Seoul to protest Moon’s rapprochement at the Games. “All he’s (Kim) doing is getting more time to refine his nukes and ICBM program.”
When South Korea hosted the 1988 Summer Olympics, it proved to be a transformative event for the capital city and cemented South Korea’s emergence as a major world economy.
In the six years leading up to the Seoul Games, South Korea made huge investments in infrastructure and Olympic-related projects, adding 0.4% to the GNP. That same year South Korea’s annual trade exceeded $100 billion for the first time.
In Pyeongchang, there are hopes that the Winter Games can help broaden the world’s view of South Korea beyond Seoul and bolster the area’s economy, said Bei Young Il, 47, who owns a shoe store not far from the Olympic Stadium.
After the Games are over, he hopes international visitors will go back to their home countries and tell their friends and families about his beloved Pyeongchang’s crisp air and mountain views. On the flip side, Bei says hosting the Olympics has already changed how he and Pyeongchang residents look at their place in South Korea.
“Having foreign visitors has changed the consciousness of the town,” Bei said. “We are becoming more internationally oriented than before. This can mark an important moment for us.”
This city and neighboring towns boast majestic mountains and miles of pristine coastline. Among Koreans, the city had long been a well-known resort town, albeit one that was difficult to get to despite being about 80 miles from Seoul.
But with the building of a bullet train connecting Incheon International Airport to Pyeongchang and millions of dollars poured into road repairs by the government ahead of the Games, locals say that Pyeongchang no longer feels so isolated.
Still, some business owners that came to Pyeongchang for the Games said they’re not quite yet ready to call the Games a success.
Panchali Mitra, a Seoul resident who with her husband and a business partner opened a temporary Indian restaurant and food stall near Olympic Stadium for the Games, said business hasn’t been quite as good as she hoped it would be.
High winds collapsed a heated tent that was supposed to serve as an auxiliary dining room at the restaurant. And frigid temperatures on the first day of the Games ruined tomatoes and vegetables the restaurateurs were storing outside the restaurant.
Mitra, who moved with her husband to Seoul from Tokyo 17 years ago, recalled experiencing the remarkable energy of the 2002 World Cup soccer tournament in South Korea — an event that built upon the 1988 Summer Games and brought more foreigners to Seoul. The Winter Games don’t quite have that energy, she said.
“For the World Cup, Seoul was in a trance,” Mitra said. “It doesn’t feel quite like that for the Olympics. I just hope that maybe, like the World Cup, the Winter Olympics is going to make South Korea, beyond Seoul, more cosmopolitan and show the world there is more to Korea.”