These Olympics are very meaningful for South Korea for many reasons. The first reason is that with these Olympic games, Korea will achieve the ‘Sporting Events Grand Slam’. The ‘Sporting Events Grand Slam’ is holding four international sporting events. The four sporting events are The Summer and Winter Olympics, The Soccer World Cup, and the World Athletics Championships. Even China and USA haven’t accomplished it yet. USA will achieve this in 2021 when the World Athletics Championships are held in the USA. By achieving this grand slam, Korea will be able to increase national status and create an economic ripple effect by holding Olympic games successfully and having good follow-up management. There is another reason that these Olympic games are meaningful as well. This reason is that these games will have the biggest amount of participation groups from North Korea visiting South Korea. Though North Korea’s athletes will be about 10 people, the other groups, such as the cheering squad, are increased by a great number of people. Korea’s government wants them to visit Korea by land because after Gaeseong Industrial Complex ceased to function in 2016, the railway connecting North Korea and South Korea has been neglected. So, if North Korea’s participation group visits South Korea by land, there will be a possibility that the railway will be able to be used again.

One of the biggest benefits of holding big sporting events is profit from selling tickets, so it’s just as important as holding an Olympic event successfully. One of the reasons why it’s hard to buy Olympic tickets is that the price of the tickets are very expensive. The most expensive ticket is a ticket for the opening ceremony, which reaches up to 1,500,000 won. Among the targeted sales of 1,618,000 tickets, 709,000 tickets were sold, posting 66.4 % sales. Also, 25 autonomous regions already bought 22,000 tickets to allocate to people. Seoul bought 42,000 tickets to allocate to people, too. They will allocate to low-income brackets and multicultural families first. Lim Kyeong-hun, the professor of sport economics at Seoul University said, “Ticket sales of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics are not bad even if the events of the Winter Olympics are less familiar to Korean people than the events of the Summer Olympics.” Prof. Lim finally added, “Though the sales will be increased steadily before the opening of the Olympics, we need more attention from people to sell more tickets.”

Korea is not strong in the events of the Winter Olympics. So, in the PyeongChang Olympics, many naturalized Koreans will participate. To strengthen Korea’s weak events, many people from North America and Europe are chosen as members of the national team. The most naturalized athletes will participate in this Olympic event. There are eight from Canada, five from the USA, three from Russia, and one from each of Norway and Germany. The most remarkable event is ice hockey, where 11 athletes will participate. After putting naturalized athletes in ice hockey team, the Korean ice hockey team’s performance got much better. Last year, they even entered IIHF, the International Ice Hockey Federation, for the first time in 38 years. The event in which the athletes will be most likely to get medals from is the biathlon. Athletes from Russia will participate in the biathlon, and one of them won the Biathlon World Cup of IBU, the International Biathlon Union, six times. Also, the biathlon has a penalty if athletes’ are gunning, so it’s possible for athletes whose rankings are under 20th to get medals. Even though the naturalized athletes don’t look Korean, they will participate in the Olympics hanging Korean marks. It’s expected that they will surprise the world.

2018.1.31 Jang Hoyeon