The Olympic flag that waved in the clear wind blowing down from the mountainous Daegwallyeong region of Gangwon-do Province has now been lowered. The Olympic flame that lit the world from atop a moon-shaped platform that reminded you of a Joseon-era white porcelain vase has now been extinguished. The 17-day PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games have now come to an end.
The joint parade of South and North Korean athletes in the Opening Ceremony deeply moved the world. Athletes tried to have the tip of their skate blade cross the finish line 0.001 seconds ahead of their competitors. They soared from the ski jump platform as far and as high as possible. All their sweat and tears have now gone down in history. Such historic scenes that unfolded for 17 days have now been enshrined deep in the hearts of people all around the world.
The PyeongChang Olympic Games took place in one of the smallest cities ever to host the Winter Olympics, but will be remembered as Games that have marked bigger and brighter milestones than ever before.
One of the milestones was the realization of the Olympics of Peace.
The joint parade of the inter-Korean athletes and the establishment of the first-ever inter-Korean women’s ice hockey team in PyeongChang have demonstrated to the world the true Olympic spirit. Sports can overcome all political differences and unite people from around the world.
It’s safe to say that North Korea’s participation in the Olympic Games has been a milestone that shows the world's strong desire for peace, as well as that of the two Koreas and of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
In retrospect, the ancient Olympic Games were all peaceful Games. In Olympia, Greece, known for having been the site of Olympic Games in classical times, during the Games there were declarations that banned any hostile act and that stopped any execution. Instead, they granted pardons.
In modern times, however, the Olympic Games have stopped three times, during the First and Second World Wars. They have also sadly been beset by terrorist attacks and by Olympic boycotts, too.
At the Moscow 1980 Olympic Summer Games, more than 60 countries boycotted the Olympics, condemning the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. At the following Games in Los Angeles in 1984, the Soviet Union and some East European countries refused to participate.
However, the Summer Olympic Games took place again in 1988, this time in Seoul, and they were credited for reviving the true Olympic spirit of being peaceful, as they contributed to helping end the Cold War and the confrontation between the East and the West.
Three decades later, in 2018 Korea has now revived the Olympic spirit once again by bringing about the U.N.’s adoption of an Olympic Truce to build a peaceful and better world through sport, by supporting the Olympic ideal, and by making it possible for North Korea to participate in these Winter Games. That’s a true achievement that’s worth being highly appreciated.
The second milestone was that the PyeongChang Games have served as a Tech Olympics.
In general, Olympic host countries take advantage of the international sporting festival to show off their high-tech and to offer a glimpse into the future of humanity. Korea, too, has made the best of these Olympic Games to show the world its cutting-edge IT, like drones at the Opening Ceremony, robots at the airport, ultra high definition broadcasts (UHD) and fifth generation mobile networks (5G).
A lot of non-Korean press has focused on the IT on display in PyeongChang and has forecast a future that would come to the fore of our global society. The French daily Le Figaro wrote that, “The PyeongChang Olympic Games were a golden opportunity to give a strong impression to the world that Korea is a world leader in terms of technical innovations.”
Lastly, the PyeongChang Games were Safe Olympics.
Safety is the key to success for international events like the Olympic Games, which bring together people from around the world. It’s more crucial than ever, as we are now living in a world where terrorists and conflicts prevail.
Safety concerns were a major setback early on for the PyeongChang Olympic Games, especially because some countries were reluctant to participate out of worries about tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
However, Korea cleared away any such concerns by having North Korean athletes in the competition and then ramped up public security at home, almost perfectly. Not a single crime against a non-Korean tourist or an Olympic fan was reported during the Games. The police quickly responded to a total of 17 acts committed by non-Korean visitors, and the tourist police unit was on patrol across the host cities, handling more than 100 trivial cases reported by non-Korean visitors, like lost property.
Due to all these achievements, with peace, IT and security, the PyeongChang Games came to an end as some of the most successful Olympic Games ever. However, that's not enough.
IOC President Thomas Bach said in a press conference prior to the Closing Ceremony on Feb. 25 that, “The joint march of the two Koreas and the unified women's ice hockey team sent a powerful message of peace, which transcends sport, to the entire world,” and he hoped that the political world would use this momentum created during the PyeongChang Games for dialogue.
Yes, we should continue to make efforts so that the seeds of peace on the Korean Peninsula that has sprouted at the Olympic Games can blossom into world peace. We also should never stop sharing with the world our achievements and technologies and, also, how Korea can go through all of its ordeals and struggles that it faces and come out on top.
“The Olympic Games are something that implants an ideal in peoples’ minds, and the ideal becomes something that’s part of peoples’ lives,” said Pierre de Coubertin, often called the father of the modern Olympic Games.
Just as he said, I hope that our efforts to establish peace on the Korean Peninsula and exchange our heritage and traditions with other countries around the world, as we did in PyeongChang, will implant an ideal among them, one that calls out for an improved humanity through world peace, sports and cultural heritage.