Security Tight in Seoul as NBC Prepares for Games

The last time NBC was scheduled to telecast the Summer Olympics, the United States boycotted and the network had to stay home with the athletes. Eight years later, the network finds itself preparing to cover the XXIV Summer Olympics here amid tight security precautions against potential disruptions.

The heavy security was apparent Tuesday as a group of about 30 U.S. journalists toured the impressive Seoul Sports Complex and the nearby Olympic Park. There were high fences around the Olympic facilities, guards not only at the gates but also throughout the grounds and inside some of the buildings, airport-like metal detectors to walk through, and a search of camera bags and purses.

Even with that ominous tone, the presentations at the venues by NBC executives and sports commentators were upbeat. No one seemed to feel these Games will not take place.

A 24-year-old South Korean judoist who hopes to make his country’s Olympic team said at one press conference, “There was strong fear that the Games might not take place, but it is not here anymore.” He was referring to earlier rioting and vows by North Korean factions that the Games would be disrupted. “There have been no more incidents; these Games will take place,” he said a second time through an interpreter.

A young South Korean woman tour guide, relating the troubled history of this country, and how it has been almost completely rebuilt in the 30 years since the Korean War, said that “we are the hardest-working people in the world. I wish and hope and bet we will have the most successful Olympic Games.”

NBC hopes so, too. It has been 16 years since the network covered an Olympics--the 1972 Winter Games in Sapporo, Japan--and it is planning to broadcast 179 1/2 hours of this one, beginning Sept. 17.

Michael Weisman, executive producer of NBC Sports, said that in the last 28 years, NBC and CBS have carried two Olympics each, while ABC has covered 10. Indeed, ABC promotes itself as the network of the Olympics.

“We’re going to try to change that perception,” Weisman said in an interview. “Our attempt over the next few months is to get people thinking in terms of ‘NBC and the Olympics . . . A new tradition.’ ”

However, while eager to win a piece of Olympic gold for NBC, Weisman said that Roone Arledge, his former counterpart at ABC Sports, “literally developed the Olympics as the TV show that we now know.”

“Roone was the mastermind behind the ‘Up Close and Personal’ features and building stories. We’re going to borrow a lot from what he and ABC have established.”

As part of its goal to educate and enlighten with the Olympics, Weisman said, NBC will build on the “Up Close and Personal” approach with “Profiles” of the athletes plus using a new series of “Chronicles” that will look beyond the training and families of the athletes and focus on their countries.

“My feeling,” he said, “is that people don’t really have a sense or knowledge of the countries athletes come from. How many people know what’s happening in East Germany or what the major occupation is in Brazil? These 2- (and) 3-minute chronicles are in a broad sense going to be educational and informative pieces.

“Yes, we borrowed--or stole, if you will--the ‘Up Close and Personal’ idea from ABC, but we’re adding our own touch. I think people will find them interesting.”

Weisman, too, has confidence in NBC’s team of producers, directors and talent--including Bryant Gumbel, Bob Costas and Dick Enberg--and feels “as a unit, we will match ABC or any group that has ever been put together to do a major sports project.”

Weisman is one of several NBC executives here for a weeklong press event for the American journalists who are checking out Seoul’s Olympic venues and broadcasting facilities.

On Tuesday--a gray, cold, rainy day more akin to winter than summer--the press group visited the Seoul Sports Complex, which has a 100,000-seat Olympic track and field stadium, a 50,000-seat baseball stadium, an indoor pool and a students’ gymnasium, and the nearby Olympic Park, which has cycling, fencing, weightlifting, tennis and swimming facilities.

The visiting journalists also had a look at tae kwon do, a Korean karate-like sport demonstrated with great discipline by about 60 youngsters, and later heard a story about and then met a Korean man who, as a young athlete, won the marathon in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

His name is Sohn Kee Chung, and though he is Korean, Japan got credit for his gold medal since Korea was occupied by Japan at that time. He has tried unsuccessfully in the years since to get the record corrected and bring the credit to his own country.

“I was the one who won the medal, but they were playing another anthem,” he recalled of the medal ceremony.

Asked what it means to him now to have the Olympics in Korea, he gave a lengthy and seemingly impassioned response in Korean. Unfortunately, when he finished, the interpreter said his reply had been so long he would have to ask him to repeat it. The now-gray-haired gold medal winner smiled, and in effect said simply, “You all know the answer.”

Other than that, the language barrier has not created a problem. Korean hosts have bowed their best bows, tried to speak their best English. And at a buffet Tuesday night, a four-woman string group even played a rousing rendition of “Dixie” mixed in with the chamber music.

At this same event, the napkins handed out with the drinks were neatly printed in red and green with the words “Season’s Greetings.”

Well, not everyone here understands English quite yet.