Seoul 1988: Facilities Nearly Ready, but Unrest Clouds Games

Outside the gleaming Olympic headquarters, the ancient mud castles of more than a thousand years ago give way to jogging paths.

Nearby, hundreds of men and women take their morning regimen of calisthenics. Not world-class pole vaulters or sprinters, but officialdom and working stiffs alike getting ready for what lies ahead.

Park Seh-Jik, who likes to run stairs to stay in shape, is president of the Seoul Olympic Organizing Committee. In his office overlooking the Olympic complex hangs a picture of Chun Doo Hwan, the embattled president of a country facing its most prolonged anti-government violence in years. On the opposite wall is a number signaling the number of days until the Summer Olympic extravaganza opens Sept. 17, 1988.

“We are without doubt, ready to accept, receive and welcome the world to Seoul,” he says.

Few will argue that his city, not to mention an entire country, is ready. The government has tens of thousands more Olympic volunteers than it knows what to do with. And next to the scheduled transfer of presidential power, which opposition forces charge will keep Chun’s ruling party in control, no issue has taken greater priority than the Olympics.

South Korea will have poured some $3 billion into the Olympics by the time more than 9,000 athletes are scheduled to descend on Seoul in 1988. And just as Japan used the 1964 Tokyo Olympics as a springboard toward joining the world’s economic elite, the thinking is similar in South Korea nearly a quarter-century later.

But unabated civil unrest has led to considerable doubts about whether an Olympics can or should be held in such conditions. However, Richard Pound, an International Olympic Committee vice president from Canada, says he is certain the Olympics will proceed in Seoul.

“I think the Koreans will pull together and solve their problems before the Games,” he said on a recent trip to New York. “I think they can find some arrangement and put their problems on hold. The entire spectrum of Korean society wants a successful Games.”

Pound contends it was difficult to project the turmoil sweeping South Korea at the time the Olympics were awarded in 1981. The only competing site was Nagoya, Japan.

“Hindsight is always 20-20,” he says. “You could ask about the ’72 Games in Munich or at ’76 in Montreal or 1936 in Berlin or 1980 in Moscow. You have to do these things five, six, seven years in advance. You’ll find this whole issue is a red herring. I don’t think it will be in play come the Olympics.”

The IOC is on considerably surer footing concerning the groundwork of local organizers. IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch says the athletic facilities in Seoul could be the best in Olympic history.

The arenas for gymnastics and weightlifting as well as the cycling velodrome are state of the art. There is even a separate building designed for fencing. The only remaining work involves an indoor swimming pool and housing for athletes, media and officials.

The venues are also blessedly accessible. At the 1984 Los Angeles Games, a trip from the water polo pool in Malibu to the volleyball arena in Long Beach could occupy the better part of an afternoon on the San Diego Freeway. In Seoul, many events will be within a short walk of each other.

“No country in the world has been prepared so well, so far in advance,” Park says.

But such self-congratulation has been dwarfed by nationwide rioting and calls from some quarters for the Olympics to be moved or boycotted. Never have the dangers been clearer of holding the world’s biggest sports spectacle in as politically flammable a place as South Korea.

The gravest concern is next year’s scheduled transfer of presidential power. There are also longstanding tensions between South and North Korea with 1.5 million troops stationed near one of the world’s most sensitive borders.

The United States has key military installations and more than 40,000 troops in South Korea. Many students accuse the United States of blocking democratic reforms in their country.

All of which prompts questions as to why the IOC would grant the Games to Seoul. Pound says his organization was impressed by the thoroughness of the South Korean bid.

“We were also sending a message to the world that you don’t have to be a superpower to hold the Olympics,” he says.

Every day the past few months Chun’s authoritarian policies have met raging public protest. Students and merchants are tear-gassed, opposition leaders put under house arrest, universities shut down and native journalists censured. Two soccer games were halted when tear gas from demonstrations blew on field.

The students, supported by an emboldened middle class, have demanded the overthrow of the government. Since Chun named Roh Tae-woo his hand-picked successor June 10 the country has been engulfed by fierce protests.

The Land of the Morning Calm, as South Korea is sometimes called, has been anything but.

Park holds a highly visible post. The SLOOC president is a polished career army officer and one of the few in the South Korean hierarchy with full and easy command of the English language.

Yet, like all connected with the Seoul Games, he is exceedingly careful when discussing anything that might upset the Olympic splendor. In an interview with United Press International, before the most strident wave of protests, Park consulted index cards before answering basic questions about the Olympics.

“Our people, the great majority, are very proud to host the Games,” Park says. “So I firmly believe our national pride will overcome all such domestic matters which were put aside during the Asian Games (last year). I do not envision any student unrest aimed directly at the hosting of the (Olympic) Games.”

Park told UPI he had a feeling of “strong confidence” there would be a smooth transfer of presidential authority. Chun had suspended constitutional debate until after the Olympics, but a recent meeting on the matter with opposition leaders provided no immediate prospect for peaceful settlement.

The Olympics have not been a major rallying point for the protesters. However, dissident leader Kim Young-sam likens the Seoul Games to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, claiming South Koreans will be pawns serving as “self-advertisement” for the government.

There is far greater unity among South Koreans concerning the perceived threat from North Korea. On the 15th of each month sirens wail through Seoul, a skyscrapered capital of 10 million people. The air-raid drill clears the streets of the city that is less than 40 miles from North Korea.

The North Koreans claim the Olympics were awarded to Seoul through political maneuvering--and they don’t want to be left behind while the spotlight turns south toward booming industrial development.

North Korea wants eight Olympic events, but South Korea and the IOC have drawn the line at four--table tennis, archery, preliminary soccer and road cycling.

The disagreement goes on interminably. The next round of talks comes in Switzerland July 14-15. And if the Olympics ever add political wrangling to the list of medal sports, surely this dispute would be a highlight attraction.

North Korea may want to share the party, but it is hardly the world’s vivacious host. It is a closed society, wary of all but the most ideologically sympathetic visitors. Yet, an IOC condition for granting part of the Olympics to North Korea is that the country open its borders to athletes, reporters and officials.

North Korea spurned an IOC request for a delegation to travel by land from North Korea across the Demilitarized Zone into South Korea. The IOC hoped a good-will gesture would demonstrate North Korea’s desire to cooperate.

The North Koreans earlier skipped an Olympic qualifying soccer tournament, claiming as co-host it need not play.

“First, they register in the soccer tournament and suddenly don’t show up for the qualifying games in Malaysia,” Park says. “I think it’s very strange.”

The last three Summer Games have been struck by boycotts, and Samaranch would like nothing better than to leave as his legacy an Olympics free of lasting political rancor.

North Korea has threatened to boycott if not accommodated. But it maintains an independence in alliances with China and the Soviet Union, and so far both giants have shown little enthusiasm for a boycott. Cuba is the only sports power to publicly support the North Koreans.

“Even the most subjective observers believe that a Pyongyang-led boycott will receive little or no support,” Park says.

However, in the wake of bloodshed in South Korea, noises now come from the other side.

Jesse Jackson, a likely American presidential candidate, plans to urge a boycott if South Korea fails to make “measurable improvements” in human rights. Robert Helmick, president of the U.S. Olympic Committee, says Americans would not attend the Games if the athletes’ safety were threatened.

Los Angeles, Indianapolis, New York and Berlin have offered to act as alternate hosts. Kim Chong-ha, president of South Korea’s National Olympic Committee, says shifting the Games would cause his nation “irrecoverable disgrace.”

Pound knows of no cities that have formally approached the IOC on this matter.

“We would say thank you very much, we appreciate the kindness and generosity of your spirit, but the Games are in Seoul,” he says. “There is no intention of moving them.”

As for what it would take to shift the Games, Pound refuses to speculate: “You don’t want to write a Stephen King kind of script of what can go wrong.”

If quiet does come to Seoul by 1988, with the threats and turmoil and polemics put aside, the city will have much to offer its Olympic visitors:

The soaring tower atop Mount Namsan, rock gardens and walled palaces, an immaculate and efficient subway system, the labyrinthine Tongdaemum market with unending stalls of silk, servings of kimchi pickled cabbage, beer in magnum-sized bottles, and ubiquitous barber-shop poles signaling where male customers can get a trim--and other attentions.

It is also a city where tipping is frowned on; custom-made suits are produced and delivered in a day, and hotel rooms are stocked not with Gideon Bibles, but with the Teachings of Buddha.

Western culture has assuredly left its mark: Cable News Network television reminds guests of ball scores and flash-flood warnings back home; business cards are exchanged as frequently as handshakes, and cut-rate running shoes keep an economy pumping.

Said one taxi driver to his foreign passengers: “Ah, Americans! Surfin’ USA.”

Before the disruptions, Seoul was sprucing up for its guests. There were calls for tree and flower plantings. A clean-up project began on the Han River. Lead-free gasoline for cars was to be introduced.

Ultimately, such things will not make or break the Seoul Olympics. Only the political climate can do that.