Where do the Winter Olympics go from here?
identity will be Pyeongchang, the more lightly populated nearby county where the mountain venues will be based and which will also be the site of the opening and closing ceremonies.
One of the first orders of business will be to try to halt the flood of phonetically challenged Westerners who continue to confuse Pyeongchang with the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.
“Hopefully I will stop explaining that I am not working for North Korea,” Stratos Safioleas, a consultant with Pyeongchang, wrote on Twitter on Monday.
Gangwon once formed a single province with Kangwon province, which now lies on the other side of the North Korean border. Kim is well aware that the proximity to his politically unstable neighbor will not pass unnoticed.
“I understand such concerns from the western world, but you know South Korea and North Korea, the Korean Peninsula have been divided over the past 60-70 years, and the situation is the same at the moment,” he said.
He pointed to South Korea’s successfully staging major sporting events like the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, the 2002 World Cup of soccer and the 2011 world athletics championships.
“This situation hasn’t posed any threat to such mega events, so we are not concerned about this,” he said. “Overall, personally, I believe the inter-Korean relationship will be further advanced going forward to realize peace on the Korean Peninsula and to achieve mutual development.”
That is a hopeful prospect, and so — in a much more minor key — is Pyeon- chang’s centralized attempt to put the accent on atmosphere. Kim said he expects full venues because of local enthusiasm and relatively easy access from the capital of Seoul.
“The finish areas of the venues are very close to the ski resort,” he said. “So we think we can create the Olympic atmosphere there, and the Seoul metropolitan era with 25 million will be one hour away by the high-speed railway and 11/ hours by car on the new expressway.”
Atmosphere was not Sochi’s strength, though it does deserve plenty of credit. Its venues were generally eye-catching and innovative. Its security plan — the most important element based on established threats — clearly worked and was not overly intrusive. Its young cadre of volunteers kept smiling and hustling throughout (and were still smiling Monday). Its transport system worked better than any other in recent memory at a Winter Olympics, in part because the transit times were short and the transits uncomplicated.
Enthusiasm, as is typical, snowballed as the finish line loomed, helped along by Russia’s surprisingly strong performance that led to finishing atop the medal table for the first time since the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Russia’s 13 gold medals and 33 total medals were no coincidence but rather the result of a well-organized and well-financed plan that made use of both foreign and Russian coaching talent.
The Russian team’s success in Sochi almost — almost — compensated for the men’s hockey team’s failing to reach the medal round.
But there was still a lack of vibrancy and Olympic- worthy ambience in many venues, particularly in the mountains, and also a lack of a true gathering point there for communion and celebration. Alpine skiing is not a traditional focal point for Russia, and it often felt that way in Rosa Khutor.
Down below, by the Black Sea, the ambience in the Winter Olympic Park ranged from festive and raucous to sterile and empty enough to give one a strong sense of what this vast, resolutely heterogeneous complex could look like if the legacy plan is not expertly and creatively managed.
Rarely has an Olympic site looked more like an ideal habitat for white elephants, but then Sochi and the Russians surprised us this time on a very tight deadline, so perhaps they will surprise us again seven more years down the road.