By Kang Hyun-kyung
Jacques Rogge, then-president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), opened a sealed envelope for the much-anticipated announcement about the 2018 Olympics during the IOC General Assembly meeting in July 2011 in South Africa’s eastern coastal city of Durban.
“The International Olympic Committee is now announcing (that) the 23rd Olympic Games in 2018 are awarded to…” he paused a moment as he pulled a white card out of the envelope. He showed it to the audience there and finished his announcement by saying, “the city of PyeongChang.” On the flipside of the white card shown by the IOC chief read “PYEONGCHANG 2018.”
Korean delegates, including then-President Lee Myung-bak who was seated near the podium in the front row of the Durban International Convention Center, burst into cheers and applause. They hugged each other and some shed tears while celebrating Korea’s winning the bid to host the Winter Olympics after two previous unsuccessful bids. Video clips of the emotional moment went viral.
Korea’s decade-long campaign to host the Winter Olympics, which was first conceived back in 1997 and was officially made public in 2000 during the Kim Dae-jung government, eventually bore fruit.
The Durban drama, however, was the prelude to the checkered fate of the PyeongChang Olympics.
Just like the old Korean saying, “Not a single day has passed without wind for leafy green trees,” the organizing committee has undergone several unwanted changes since it was launched on Oct. 19, 2011. Koreans use the phrase when mentioning parents fraught with troubles caused by their offspring. For the PyeongChang committee, the troublemakers were former President Park Geun-hye and her cronies. Frequent leadership changes and political meddling with the preparations hampered smooth preparations for the Winter Olympics.
Following the inauguration of liberal President Moon Jae-in on Wednesday, the fate of the PyeongChang Organizing Committee for the 2018 Olympic & Paralympic Winter Games (POCOG) and the continuity of its leadership has come to the fore — will current President Lee Hee-beom keep his post?
Once a new President takes office, Cabinet members are replaced and key posts are filled with figures in sync with the political orientation of the leader. The notion of new wineskins for new wine plays out behind the reshuffles.
“I’m not in a position to comment on the leadership reshuffle, because it’s a decision to be made by the President, not by someone inside the organizing committee,” POCOG spokesman Sung Baik-you said.
However, he hoped for its continuity.
“Mr. Lee served as minister of industry and energy under the Roh Moo-hyun government when President Moon was serving as presidential chief of staff,” Sung said. His remarks suggest Moon and Lee are in sync with each other in terms of policy orientation because they worked together under a liberal government.
Sung said the presidential election held seven months earlier than initially scheduled in December because of the unprecedented removal of Park from the presidency has ironically helped POCOG staff better prepare for the Olympics.
“If the presidential election were to be held as scheduled in December, we, PyeongChang staff, were supposed to report every detail of our preparations simultaneously to outgoing and incoming presidents after the election,” he said. “This is because the sitting president was supposed to participate in the opening ceremony as head of state, while the newly elected leader will have taken over the role during the closing ceremony.”
The PyeongChang Winter Olympics are slated for Feb. 9 to 25, which will be followed by the Paralympics to be held March 9 to 18.
Korean presidents officially take office on Feb. 25, but not this time.
“Because of the May election, we no longer have to brief the two presidents on what’s going on. So our work has become simplified and streamlined because there will be no conflict of interest between the outgoing and incoming governments.”
The PyeongChang Olympics will be the first and foremost international sports event to be held in Korea during the Moon Jae-in government. Depending on its success, history shows such a crucial international sporting event can provide a rare opportunity for political leaders to prove themselves as effective leaders at home, as well as abroad.
As seen in 2002 during the Korea-Japan FIFA World Cup, some politicians benefited a lot from the football boom to create their power base. Rep. Chung Mong-joon, who then served as vice chairman of the international football body and aspired to be its president, rose to stardom for his role in attracting the event to Korea.
He topped public opinion surveys as a presidential candidate after the FIFA World Cup. His surging popularity continued for a while before he announced he would drop out of the presidential race to support liberal candidate Roh Moo-hyun.
Kim Yu-kyoum, a professor of physical education at Seoul National University, said the PyeongChang Olympics is a high-risk high-return game for President Moon.
“President Lee Myung-bak won the bid to host the Olympics in Korea and launched the organizing committee which was taken over by President Park,” he said. “It will be President Moon who will take responsibility for how the Olympics will turn out, because the event will be held during his tenure. If the nation successfully hosts the Olympics, President Moon will benefit a lot because he can solidify his support base. However, the opposite also holds true for the President if something goes wrong with the preparations or the hosting of the event.”
The PyeongChang Winter Olympics had become a political football during the Park Geun-hye government and POCOG suffered the consequences.
Lee Hee-beom is its third president, assuming the post in March last year to replace Hanjin Group Chairman Cho Yang-ho. Cho later said he was forced to leave the position without knowing exactly why. Then-Sports Minister Kim Jong-deuk “notified” him about the decision and Cho said he didn’t ask why. Later it was known that Cho’s rejection of the calls from Choi Soon-sil to contribute money for the establishment of the Mir and K-Sports foundations caused the ire of Choi and the president’s crony influenced Cho’s dismissal.
Cho served as president of the organizing committee from July 2014 to March 2016 after Kim Jin-sun, the inaugural chairman of the committee and former governor of Gangwon Province, suddenly quit for unspecified reasons.
Park’s longtime friend Choi Soon-sil and her colluders allegedly attempted to take advantage of the Winter Olympics to increase their wealth. The image of the Olympics was tarnished, and as a consequence, POCOG struggled to raise funds from corporate entities that were implicated in the Choi scandal. The scandal, in which Choi had wielded enormous influence in overall national affairs and key decision-making, boiled down to Park’s poor leadership and consequently cut her tenure short.