2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics
Also called: XXIII Olympic Winter Games, 2018 Winter Olympics, Pyeongchang 2018
South Korea’s second Olympics, thirty years after Seoul, and its first Winter Games. The two Koreas marched together and fielded a joint women’s ice-hockey team, and a visit by a high-level North Korean delegation led on to inter-Korean summits.
DangTungDuong · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source
PyeongChang in Gangwon Province lost bids for 2010 and 2014 to Vancouver and Sochi, and on its third attempt was chosen for 2018 at the IOC session in Durban, South Africa, on 6 July 2011. The Games were held from 9 to 25 February at PyeongChang (snow events), Gangneung (ice events) and Jeongseon (Alpine downhill), with 92 nations taking part and, for the first time, more than 100 medal events (102). Russian athletes, under sanctions over doping, competed as “Olympic Athletes from Russia” (OAR).
Tension was high after North Korea’s nuclear test and missile launches in 2017, but Kim Jong-un signalled in his 2018 New Year address that the North would take part, and this was settled at high-level inter-Korean talks at Panmunjom on 9 January. At the opening ceremony the two Korean teams marched in together behind the Korean Unification Flag (carried by Won Yun-jong and Hwang Chung-gum), and a joint women’s ice-hockey team was formed, the first unified Korean team at an Olympics. The flame passed through the joint team’s Park Jong-ah and Jong Su-hyon to Kim Yu-na, who lit the cauldron.
North Korea sent a high-level delegation led by Kim Yong-nam, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly, and Kim Jong-un’s sister Kim Yo-jong. Meeting President Moon Jae-in at the Blue House on 10 February, Kim Yo-jong handed over a personal letter from Kim Jong-un and an invitation to Pyongyang. After South Korean special envoys visited Pyongyang in March, an inter-Korean summit was held at Panmunjom on 27 April (the Panmunjom Declaration). South Korea finished seventh with five golds, eight silvers and four bronzes; Yun Sung-bin won the skeleton, Asia’s first Olympic gold in a sliding sport, and the women’s curling team took silver.
