South Korea not seeking Soviet ban

Press, 24 September 1983, Page 19

South Korea not seeking Soviet ban

From

BRUCE ROSCOE

in Seoul

While California has voted in support of a resolution banning Soviet participation in the Olympic Games at Los Angeles next year. South Korea, which is to host the 1988 Olympics, is pledging to keep politics out of sport. The California State Legislator’s resolution, passed on September 11, unanimously by the Assembly and Senate, condemned the Soviet Union for its destruction in mid-air of a Korean Air Lines 747 (jumbo jet) on September 1.

The South Korean Ministry of Sports, however, says it will abide by the rules of the International Olympic Committee (1.0. C. which commits itself to the principle of separating politics from sport, and welcome not only Soviet athletes but all competitors from Communist countries.

“It is not the sportsmen, wherever they are from, who are making wars, who are killing people. It is the politicians and the military,” said the Vice-Minister for Sport, Mr Lee Young Ho, in an interview. '

The Sports Ministry, which also has under its charge preparations for the 1986 Asian Games, was quickly set up after the 1.0. C. in September, 1981, awarded the South Korean capital of Seoul the twentyfourth Olympiad. “The President (Chun Doo Hwan),” Mr Lee said, “assumed there was a great need for sports diplomacy.” “Our policy is based on

opening relations with Communist countries. I do not think that keeping away from them in the area of sport will work for peace,” he said. Nothing appears to matter more to South Korea than a successful hosting of the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, which is being treated to a massive facelift for the occasion. Day and night, this bustling city of nine million

people is throbbing with mammoth construction projects for underground railway systems, high-rise office blocks and hotels. Already, one year before the marathoner’s torch will be lit at Los Angeles, the Seoul Sports Complex, which will be the main venue of the 1988 Olympics, is well under way. Accord-

ing to the Seoul Olympic Organising Committee, 89 per cent of the construction work is finished. “It is of greatest importance for us to host the Olympics,” said Mr Lee. “We have had a history of humiliation, a history in which we were often invaded. Once recently we lost our independence to Japan, and in the 1950 s we had the Korean war.

“We have worked hard these last 30 years. We are coming out of a history of suffering, humiliation and poverty.” . The Olympics, Mr Lee said, were an “international stamp of approval that we have done it well.” “Twenty or 30 years ago you would have seen beggars all over Seoul. There

were people who were starving to death, people who couldn’t have adequate clothing or housing, though we still have a lot to do in terms of housing,” said Mr Lee, a graduate of Yale University and former professor of international relations at Ewha Women’s University in Seoul.

“This kind of historical background makes it so much more important for us. Now we are being rewarded psychologically for the hard work we have done,” he said.

Known as the “Hermit Kingdom” until the turn of the century, when Seoul was a stone-walled town with a population of less than 100,000, Korea has for the past 30 years been running a nation-building marathon

Though its external debt last year was fifth highest in the world at SUS3S.B billion, the nation is emerging, through an export-led economy, as a leader of the newly industrialising nations of Asia. Its economic growth last year surpassed Japan’s at 5.3 per cent, and 8 per cent growth has been forecast for this year. The Olympics, though in the short term imposing an enormous burden on the economy, would in the long term provide a big economic boost, Mr Lee said. “Already our business people are taking advantage of this. Because when we go to a certain country and try to sell something made in Korea, the buyer, knowing that Korea is hosting the

Olympics, gives (us) the benefit of the doubt. - “Before,” he said, “people who did not know much about Korea might have asked: ‘How can you make such a thing in a country like Korea?’ But I do not think we will hear that question too often in the future.” South Korea’s open-arms approach to the Soviet Union, and even to North Korea, which, Mr Lee said, Seoul would “do everything” it could to welcome, appears rooted in a genuine concern for peace which extends well beyond the bounds of diplomatic platitudes.

The demilitarised zone, which has divided the Korean peninsula into north and south since the end of World War 11, is less than an hour’s drive from the capital. Bordering the zone on either side, the troop concentration and fire power is, according to Mr Lee, the highest •of any region in the world.

“If we cannot maintain peace, all the hard work we have done in the past 20 to 30 years will have been for nothing. If war breaks out again, it does not matter which side wins, both sides will be completely reduced to ashes and rubble,” Mr Lee said. Seoul now boasts 47 inter-national-class hotels with over 10,000 rooms and Government plans call for the addition of 4000 rooms by 1988. Kimpo International Airport, 40 minutes from downtown Seoul, is being expanded to take 8.9 million passengers a year from its current 4.8 million.

Mr Cho Sang Ho, vicepresident of the Seoul Olympic Organising Committee, said in an interview that he expects the participation of all 151 national Olympic

committees in 23 sports, including tennis and table tennis which would be added for the first time as Olympic events. The committee anticipates the arrival of as many as 12,000 athletes and officials, 5000 organisers, a press corps of 11,000, 200,000 foreign visitors and 150,000 Koreans who live abroad. Mr Cho said that the games’ direct cost, not counting such facilities as apartment complexes which were being built privately arid would be sold after the Olympics, was estimated at SUSBOOM.

Seoul’s level of Olympic readiness would be witnessed in 1986. “The Asian Games will give us a good opportunity to test our facilities,” Mr Cho said, “and in 1987 we will rearrange our operation plans, and venues will be renovated if found insufficient.” South Korea’s own record of Olympic participation has not been unscathed by the “history of humiliation” to which Mr Lee alluded.

Its first entry was at the 1936 Olympics in which Kee Chung Sohn won a gold medal in the marathon. But because Korea was under Japanese rule at the time, Kee was recorded as a Japanese entry and in fact had been forced to run with the Japanese flag across his singlet.

It was not until 1948 in London that South Korean athletes could compete under their own flag but medals had to wait until 1976 at Montreal when South Korean sportsmen pocketed one gold medal, one silver and four bronze to rank nineteenth out of the about 100 competing countries.

For 1988, South Korea, Mr Cho said, was placing its medal hopes on boxing, wrestling, judo, shooting and archery — areas of traditional strength in international competition. “We have to put up a good performance in the field of competition itself,” said Mr Lee.

“As far as ordinary Koreans are concerned, that will be the yardstick with which they judge the success or failure of the 1988 Olympics.”