Plenty of late-night TV on tap for visitors from South Korea
Tracy Kim is planning a semi-nocturnal existence over the next few weeks. Each night she’ll be jumping online in Vancouver to catch live broadcasts of the Pyeongchang Olympics from South Korea.
She’s especially geared up for speedskating, and next weekend, she’ll be glued to her screen for the ladies’ 500-metre race.
“My favourite athlete is Lee Sang-Hwa. She won a gold medal in Vancouver” at the 2010 Winter Games, said Kim, taking a break from her downtown retail sales job to chat about how excited she is that the Games are taking place in South Korea.
“This time, if she wins gold again, it would be her third one and she would be winning at home,” Kim said. “It will be late, of course, but we can stay up to watch. Speedskating is a strong sport for (South) Korea.”
Kim has been living in Vancouver for nearly four years. She first caught Olympic fever in 2010 when she was living in Seoul. Her whole family travelled to Toronto for a holiday, stopping in Vancouver to cheer on Korean skating superstar Yuna Kim. It was a massive thrill to be with thousands of spectators, all cheering for South Korea, when Kim beat Japanese rival Mao Asada to take gold.
Yuna Kim retired after the 2014 Sochi Olympics and she’ll be missed, said YongJin Park, a computer science and engineering major at Seoul’s Chung-Ang University who is studying English in Vancouver this year.
“We don’t have a superstar,” he said with a sigh.
His friend, Youchan Park, agreed. “That’s why we’ll be watching the highlights, but not any one athlete.”
Still, he said, there are up-andcoming Korean figure skaters, such as Choi Da-bin. The two friends were enjoying a meal of rice and soup on Robson Street after having dropped off a friend who is headed to Seoul at the airport.
They were feeling homesick and said it will be hard to watch the Games from so far away, though they actually prefer Summer Olympic sports such as taekwondo and soccer.
There was a healthy dose of enthusiasm for winter sports a few weeks ago at Queen’s Park Arena in New Westminster, said Michael Chang, president of the Korean Society of B.C. He helped to organize a gala to celebrate the Pyeongchang Olympics, bringing together B.C. skaters, local politicians and members of the KoreanCanadian community.
“We had about 2,000 people watching the skaters, synchro teams and solo (performers). They brought out a huge Olympic flag.”