PyeongChang's successful bid to host the Winter Olympics in 2018 will put South Korea in elite company.
Only Japan, Germany, France and Italy have staged the world's four biggest sports competitions: the Summer and Winter Olympics, FIFA World Cup and the World Championships in Athletics by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).
South Korea held its first and only Summer Olympics in 1988 in Seoul, co-hosted the 2002 World Cup with Japan and the IAAF championships will take place in the southern city of Daegu this August.
Russia will also join the club in 2013, when Moscow hosts the IAAF event. It will hold the World Cup in 2018.
Exclusive status aside, PyeongChang also stands to benefit economically. According to figures compiled by the bid committee, the economic impact of a Winter Games in PyeongChang could amount to 20.5 trillion won (US$19.2 billion). The Games could also create more than 230,000 jobs.
Beyond cold numbers, though, sporting events have a history of galvanizing the country. The 1988 Seoul Olympics was a coming out party for the nation's capital, only three decades after it was removed from the ruins of the Korean War. During the World Cup, fans decked out in red -- the national team's color -- poured out onto streets across the nation and watched games on outdoor screens in public squares.
The IAAF championships are expected to put Daegu on the international sporting map.
The Winter Olympics should do much of the same for PyeongChang, a quiet, if obscure, alpine town nestled among mountains in the eastern part of the country. PyeongChang and neighboring towns in Gangwon Province are among the nation's underdeveloped regions, and bid officials expect the Games will turn PyeongChang into the winter sports center of Asia.
It has built state-of-the-art venues for the Olympics and they will be open to winter sports aficionados afterward. PyeongChang could also use those same facilities to stage other international competitions.
If South Korea's performance at the Vancouver Winter Olympics last year is any indication, the country will continue to develop into a winter sports power.
South Korea put together its best Winter Olympics, earning six gold medals and 14 medals overall to finish fifth and top all Asian countries.
For the first time, South Korea won medals in a sport other than short-track speed skating, with Kim Yu-na taking the ladies' figure skating title and three speed skaters dominating the sprint and long-distance races.
Hardly anything is more embarrassing in sports than for an Olympic host to get blanked in the gold medal count, as was the case for Canada in both the 1976 Summer Games and 1988 Winter Games. At this pace, South Korea should be a competitive host in seven years' time. (Yonhap)
