U.S. to Skip Seoul Games If Athletes Endangered : IOC Says Rioting in South Korea Has Not Affected Plans for Summer Olympics

The president of the U.S. Olympic Committee said Wednesday that the United States will not send a team to the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul, South Korea, if the safety of athletes is threatened.

Robert Helmick’s comments came on the same day that the International Olympic Committee said only war would force the IOC to remove the games from Seoul, which is experiencing its worst anti-government riots in seven years.

Helmick, who is in Seoul, said: “We will assess the situation in August and September of 1988. As we do for any games, we would not send a team anywhere if a team was in jeopardy.

” . . . We are prepared to cancel the trip if the safety of the team is in any way in question, which means flying into the airport, going from the airport to the hotel and from the hotel to the venue.”

However, Helmick said he believes the political climate in Seoul will improve by next summer.

“We are satisfied the situation will be well in hand by the Olympic Games,” he said. “We are continuing to prepare to be here in September, 1988.”

The IOC said that the rioting has done nothing to change plans to stage the Games in the South Korean capital.

“The position is quite clear. The Games have been awarded to Seoul, and there is absolutely no change in our position,” IOC spokeswoman Michele Verdier said in a telephone interview from the IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland.

She said the Olympic Charter allows for a changing of sites only in the case of an act of war.

Juan Antonio Samaranch, IOC president, said that he was concerned about the problems in Seoul, but that the Games, scheduled from Sept. 15 through Oct. 4, would go on as planned.

“I am sure that the games will be held in Seoul--not only that, but that they will be the best Games ever,” he told reporters in Toronto.

The situation is affecting NBC, which paid $300 million for the rights to televise the Games.

“Obviously, it’s a situation we’re concerned with, and one that we’re following closely,” Kevin Monaghan, an NBC spokesman, said. “But, at this point, it hasn’t disrupted any of our work.”

The only time the Olympics have been moved from a city where they were originally awarded by the IOC was in 1976. Voters in Denver, fearing that the Winter Olympics would roll up a huge public debt, elected to give the Games back. They were instead held in Innsbruck, Austria, where they had been held 12 years before.

The Summer Games were called off in 1916 because of World War I, and the Summer and Winter Games were canceled in 1940 and 1944 because of World War II. The 1968 Summer Games went on as scheduled in Mexico City despite student rioting that resulted in about 50 deaths shortly before the Games started.

Since June 10, thousands of students and citizens have protested in the streets of Seoul and provincial cities in a violent campaign calling for the overthrow of the military-backed government of President Chun Doo Hwan. Wednesday, officials shut 28 universities to halt campus protests, and dozens more are expected to be closed.

During the last week, two games of the 16th President Cup Soccer tournament were disrupted in two provincial cities by tear gas wafting into the stadiums from nearby political protests.

“We would not participate (in events) where tear gas is going off outside the stadium,” Helmick said.