London Korean Links

Covering things Korean in London and beyond since 2006

PyeongChang beaten fair and square?

So Korea is not to host the 2014 winter games. Beaten by Sochi in Russia. Cynics will say that the real winners from PyeongChang’s energetic campaign were CNN, who gave PyeongChang’s campaign global reach by screening the commercials (HT to Tom Coyner).

Korea, hopeful (AP, from BBC)

Despite the optimism (above), did Korea ever have a hope? A cutting article in the Asia Times says no. According to James Card there were a number of holes in PyeongChang’s arguments. Chief among them were

  • lack of snow
  • lack of apres-ski
  • lack of decent ski runs

and the list goes on. Never having been there I can’t comment (though one day a visit to the Great Mountains Music Festival could be on the cards). But it’s puzzling that the article seems to think that it was the 2010 Winter Olympics which were up for grabs last week. He’s four years out of date, and his editor is asleep on the job.

For an interesting and lively account of the voting in Guatemala City from the Russian perspective, read the Kommersant article linked below. They mention irreverently the presence of a Moldovan youth in the Korean bid team. Also interesting is the account of the voting patterns. In the first round of voting PyeongChang led 36-34-25, and Salzburg was eliminated. In the second round, the votes for Austria had to be recast between Korea and Russia. The final vote was 51-47 to Sochi1. Most of the votes which had swung from Austria to Russia were American.

Links:

Korea's disappointment (Getty Images, from BBC)

  1. Why 3 more votes were cast in the second round than in the first is not explained []

2 thoughts on “PyeongChang beaten fair and square?

Leave a Reply to daeguowl Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.