Seoul Scraps Plans to Build 300-Foot-Tall Olympic Gate

South Korea’s government-directed press has scored a rare hit with public opinion by halting a project to erect a gigantic Olympic Gate, larger than the Arch of Triumph in Paris.

The gate, outside the main Olympic sports stadium in Seoul, was intended to glorify the games being held here in 1988.

The 300-foot-tall structure was to epitomize the Olympic spirit but critics said it looked more like a rocket-launcher.

Largest Olympic Monument

Seoul city officials boasted that the gate, topped with flaring wings, would become the world’s largest Olympic monument. But when Seoul citizens saw artists’ sketches of the gate in their newspapers the response was immediate: too big, too expensive, too awful.

Some critics estimated that the gate could cost $22 million instead of the originally budgeted $9 million.

“Hardly the sort of symbolism you want for the Olympics,” said one foreign diplomat.

The Korea Herald newspaper said the gate was criticized for its “gigantesqueness” and its “controversial image.”

Now city officials say they are planning something smaller.

Stadium Popular

By contrast everyone seems to like the modernistic 100,000-capacity main Olympic stadium, completed ahead of time last year and due to be inaugurated for the Asian Games here in October.

There has also been praise for a massive clean-up operation in Seoul including the dredging and cleansing of the wide Han River which flows through the capital. The river was once little more than an open sewer, but a modern sewage system now carries the city’s waste in hidden pipes along its banks and fish are returning in increasing numbers to the cleaner river water.

Seoul’s accident-prone city council, however, ran into trouble again when it published designs for new pleasure craft to carry sightseers on the river. Newspapers carried artists’ sketches of four of the proposed boats with large garish statues of tigers, lions, horses and peacocks filling the open foredecks.

“Obnoxious,” raged the Korea Times, pointing out that the statues were not only unattractive but would obstruct the view.

Designs Scrapped

Protest letters flowed into city hall which hastily announced it was scrapping the animal boat designs and going back to the drawing board.

Work had already begun on the boats, however, and when the boat-building workers got news of the cancellation, they stormed the company office demanding payment for their efforts.

A city official who visited the scene was dragged from his car and punched and kicked. Other workers rescued the man and took him to a local hospital.

The city’s design efforts brought this comment from the Herald: “Regardless of change in the designs to reflect public opinion or not, the council is certain to suffer a lowering of public trust.”