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| Dancers in wheelchairs perform during the opening ceremony of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Paralympics, Friday. The quadrennial sporting event runs until March 18. / Yonhap |
By Baek Byung-yeul
The 2018 Winter Paralympics kicked off Friday with a grand opening ceremony in the South Korean alpine resort town of PyeongChang.
With the hope to make a world without discrimination where everyone enjoys equality, the opening ceremony ran for two hours at PyeongChang Olympic Stadium. This is the largest Winter Paralympics ever, with 570 athletes from 49 countries competing in six sports.
Many dignitaries attended the ceremony including President Moon Jae-in, former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, International Paralympic Committee (IPC) President Andrew Parsons, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Lee Hee-beom, chief of the PyeongChang Organizing Committee for the 2018 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (POCOG).
With the theme of "Passion moves us," Shin Myeong-jin, an amputee performer with a prosthetic arm and legs, beat on the giant Korean drum to herald the opening. This was the host country's traditional welcoming ceremony called "binrye."
After the ceremony, traditional Korean dancers displayed a dynamic "bango" drum dance, which symbolizes connecting Heaven, Earth and mankind together.
Eight flag bearers delivered the South Korean national flag. The flag bearers included Jeong Young-hoon, an alpine skier who was the first South Korean athlete to compete at the Winter Paralympics; Han Sang-min, who won South Korea's first-ever Winter Paralympic medal by taking silver in the alpine skiing event in 2002; and Jo Gi-seong, triple gold medalist in swimming at the 2016 Summer Paralympics.
Next, Hwang Young-taek and Kim Hyuk-gun, two singers with physical impairments, sang the national anthem of the host country together with the Korean Wheelchair Choir, the world's first all-wheelchair choir.
Athletes from 49 participating countries also had a parade during the ceremony. South and North Korea, which had a joint entrance at the Olympics, entered separately this time. The two Koreas failed to reach an agreement Thursday on whether they would march under a unification flag showing Dokdo, Korea's easternmost islets which Japan claims as its own territory.
While the North wanted the unification flag to include Dokdo, the South wanted leave out the islets in a bid to respect the IPC recommendation not to politicize sporting events.
After the parade, an artistic performance titled "Possible Dreams" was displayed depicting dreams and visions of people with impairments.
The organizing committee chief and the IPC president delivered speeches, followed by President Moon's official declaration of the opening of the Paralympics.
Then there was another artistic performance featuring wheelchair performers. Titled "Wheel of Passion," the performance symbolized the passion that guides everyone to the new world of coexistence where there is no distinction of people by impairment.
The cauldron lighting was the highlight of the opening ceremony. Having traveled all around Korea, the flame for the Paralympics arrived at the stadium.
Para ice hockey player Han Min-su handed over the torch to Kim Eun-jung, the skip of the women's curling team who competed in the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, and South Korean wheelchair curler Seo Soon-seok, and they lit the flame for the PyeongChang Paralympics.
A performance celebrating the beginning of the Winter Paralympics followed the lighting. Soprano Sumi Jo and K-pop singer Sohyang sang the Paralympic theme song, "Here as One." The two were followed by K-pop duo Clon. Kang Won-rae, a member of the veteran duo, had a motorcycle accident in 2000 that left him paralyzed from the waist down.
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