Despite Problems, There Is Optimism in Seoul About Olympics

Olympic Games always boil down to numbers. But the success of next year’s Games in Seoul won’t be measured in minutes and seconds, meters and style points.

The big numbers for Seoul will be 3 billion, 41,000 and 30.

And the wild card will be whether a deeply divided country wants the games badly enough to put its political problems on the back burner until the world has gone home.

With just under a year to go until the Sept. 17, 1988, opening ceremonies, nearly everything is in place. And the cost for South Korea has been more than $3 billion dollars, a figure it hopes to match with revenue from the Games.

The accuracy of that prophecy, however, will have a lot to do with the other two numbers.

Just 30 miles from Seoul is the border with North Korea--”within artillery range,” say residents of the city that still has monthly air raid drills.

Helping keep the fragile peace are 41,000 American troops.

Then there is the internal pressure for presidential elections that exploded earlier this year with violent street demonstrations that filled television screens in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Despite it all the South Koreans are upbeat.

“All the political and domestic matters will be solved, or at least must be left behind,” said Park Seh-jig, president of the Seoul Olympic Organizing Committee (SLOOC). “The Olympics will be held safely and successfully.”

Seoul, a sprawling city of 10 million people, is already putting finishing touches on the preparations for the games. Giant electronic billboards dot the city, ticking off the number of days to the games.

“We will revive the ideals of the Olympics,” declared a proud city resident.

Most Koreans see the games as the crowning achievement of the massive economic growth that has transformed South Korea into an emerging power.

“There is some concern about the social developments here. But any society has that kind of social development pains,” Park said.

Park, talking in his spacious 10th floor office looking out over the Olympic park, says Koreans put aside their political differences to ensure the success of the 1986 Seoul Asian Games. “Our people want the Seoul Olympics to be perfect,” he said.

The gleaming stadiums and gyms and the immaculate lawns and flower beds of the Olympic park stretched out below Park’s office.

Only the indoor swimming pool remains to be completed out of the 32 sporting facilities.

Hundreds of workmen were swarming in the distance over the tall apartment buildings of the athlete’s and press villages, which will house 19,000 people. Thousands of Koreans are busy learning English and other languages to aid the anticipated flood of visitors.

The government is spending $3.1 billion on the Olympics and the enormous cost had to be figured into the country’s latest five-year development plan. Major corporations are helping bear the cost and Olympic symbols plaster most things made in Korea.

“We hope to break even at least,” Park said.

Politics will have a lot to do with that.

President Chun Doo-hwan accepted opposition demands in July for direct presidential elections which are expected to be held in December. But the country is still troubled by student protests, strikes and other problems and many Koreans fear there could be new chaos.

And there is constant threat posed by communist North Korea with its demand to co-host the games. North Korea tells its people the Olympics will be held in Pyongyang and huge facilities reportedly are being constructed to hold the games.

“As far as the people of North Korea are concerned the 1988 Olympics are going to be in Pyongyang,” one Western observer said.

The Korean War has not officially ended even though fighting halted in 1953 because a peace treaty was never completed.

The United States, which has 41,000 troops in South Korea under a defense pact, will help guard against any threat from the north.

South Korea has repeatedly rejected North Korea’s demands to co-host the games. “Co-hosting is entirely out of the question,” Park said.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has offered North Korea five of the game’s 24 events if it accepts Seoul as the host.

The Korea Development Institute, a government-funded think tank, warned in a September report that North Korea may mount a military operation to disrupt the games.

“Pyongyang will try to disrupt the games by any means to justify its unprecedented demand to co-host the games,” the KDI said.

North Korea has attacked before, including a partly-successful attempt to wipe out the South Korean cabinet in a bombing attack in Rangoon in 1983. A bombing at Seoul’s Kimpo Airport during the 1986 Asian Games that killed five people was blamed on North Korea.

Park said there will be massive security for the Olympics.

Special regiments of combat police are being trained to protect the games and they already guard Olympic facilities around the clock.

“Our security system will be prepared for anything,” said Park, a former two-star general who was once deputy commander of the main Korean intelligence agency.

South Korea makes no secret of the fact that it sees the games as the ultimate political and diplomatic triumph over North Korea.

“The Olympics will mark a critical turning point for Seoul to achieve permanent superiority over Pyongyang,” the KDI said.