A ceremony to mark the opening of the athletes' village for the 2015 Gwangju Summer Universiade will be held in Gwangju on June 26.

The ceremony will be held in the central plaza adorned with flags of participating nations and will include a briefing on the progress of the village's construction, congratulatory and welcoming speeches, a declaration of the village's opening and the hoisting of Universiade flags. Some 500 people from various organizations, including the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Gwangju Summer Universiade Organizing Committee, will take part in the event. They will also check to make sure key facilities in the village have been properly constructed and how thorough preparations for the event are. They will also look around an information center, a hospital for the athletes, a restaurant and other facilities.



Most of the athletes will arrive at the village between June 27 and July 2. The village is located in the Hwajeong-dong neighborhood of Gwangju and will stay open until July 22, accommodating 12,000 people. There are 20 apartment towers with 2,185 units. It was built in a residential area where an old apartment complex had been demolished. The village is divided into three sections: one for international technical officers (ITO), an international area and a residential corner.

There are a match information center and a hospital in the international area, among other facilities. The residential area has accommodations, banks, a convenience store and a restaurant. The restaurant can serve 3,500 people at once and will offer 80 different menu items, changing every five days, including Western, Korean and halal cuisine.



Other important facilities include a main information center, a registration center, a control room, a gym, a religious center, a post office and a health center that is designed to deal with the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) outbreak.

Space at the healthcare center has been reserved for any suspected MERS patients, to keep them under quarantine, and 20 people, including nine personnel from the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will be present throughout the Universiade. The personnel, including both examiners and preventative medicine doctors, will try to prevent any potential spread of the infectious disease.

By Limb Jae-un
Korea.net Staff Writer
Photos courtesy of the Gwangju Summer Universiade Organizing Committee
jun2@korea.kr