Monday, February 12, 2018

<< Pyeongchang Olympic 1 >>

It’s been a while since last time I posted my writing.
Anyway, Winter Olympic game finally began in South Korea. You might be watching it on TV. I don’t know what kind of impression you got in your country. As far as I read news in English, it seemed the opening ceremony was successful. However, I have been getting different information from news that is unavailable in English.

Please take a look at the attached images below.




These are actual photos from Japanese TV programs broadcasted the opening ceremony of Winter Olympic games.
As you can see there were almost no people sitting in the stadium. The only people you can see are those who are sitting in the front stand. Isn’t this creepy? You haven’t seen any Olympics like that before, right?

I am sure US media were shooting the images with those audiences behind so that they could hide the fact that almost no people were in the stadium during the opening ceremony.
US media was demanding South Korea to fill up the empty seats and even requested to do the ceremony at night so that they could broadcast the live show on TV.
However, as far as I read Korean newspaper, tickets weren’t sold enough to reach their goal even before two days before the event.


Let me quote information from many sources to grasp the condition more accurately.

According to Sankei News reported on Feb 9th, because there weren’t enough audiences due to unsold tickets, Olympic committee and local officials gave out free tickets to local volunteers to stage fake audiences during the games. Those fake audiences are on a mission to show up one game after another when the audiences aren’t enough number to shoot Live broadcasting.

According to The Korea Herald, Olympic committee offered to give out free tickets to 17,000 volunteers to stage fake audiences for unpopular sports such as Nordic ski jump and Curling.

===( Source)===========================
http://www.sanspo.com/pyeongchang2018/news/20180210/pye18021005020019-n1.html
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According to AERA, which is an online journal published by Asahi Newspaper, the ticket for the opening ceremony was sold at nearly $800 on that day so the price was a huge rip-off as it was rumored.
Also even if you could buy the ticket and enter the stadium, once you left the stadium, you couldn’t re-enter the stadium so that many foreign audiences ended up being left outside were observed.
Some of Canadian audiences requested Korean volunteers to let them re-enter but the volunteers flatly rejected their request and made them left appalled.

The observer tickets for Feb 10 and 11 were said to be all sold out
==( Source )==============================
https://news.goo.ne.jp/article/dot/nation/dot-2018021000039
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According to “The Answer”, which is Japanese media, only 40% of seats were occupied for Ice Hockey game by United Korea.
Ice Hockey and Figure Skate were the two of the most popular games in Winter Olympics in addition to the fact observing the play of Team United Korea was the most wanted by local Korean audiences. Nevertheless, audiences were sparse. The reason is explained in the local Korean newspaper “Sports Seoul”. It was all because of rip-off brokers. They sold the tickets as much as five times of its original price on the internet.
Sports Seoul says that a special law for Pyeongchang Olympic was made in last July to punish up to $5,000 fine if anyone sold the ticket for more than the original price but it wasn't working at all.

==( Source )==============================
https://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/article?a=20180211-00017408-theanswer-spo
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Korean people never follow regulations as their common sense but violate every law and promise.

Prior to the opening ceremony, there were ominous rumors circulating in Japanese web community.
First one was that the stadium could collapse during the opening ceremony and many people would die.

Last time I showed you a picture of beam structure of Olympic stadium.
One of web community people sent the picture to a construction company in seek for professional opinions about the beam structures of the stadium and got back a reply “People might die! It can’t be! Koreans might have used aluminum beams too. I hope they didn’t!” And this exchange was shared on the internet and got a huge attention. That’s why I posted the picture in my blog last time.
It is well-known Korean construction is a very sloppy job and there have been a lot of accidents involving death toll due to their imperfect jobs before.


According to Sankei News (Japanese newspaper) reported last year on Nov 2nd, Korean news investigated Olympic stadium and revealed the condition as follow.
“When strong gust of wind blows, or a group of people moves, the whole floor of chairs wobbles”

==( Source )============================
http://www.sankei.com/premium/news/171102/prm1711020002-n1.html
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South Korea had an intention to disassemble the Olympic stadium as soon as the event was over so they built a makeshift stadium. But as the result, it seemed they sacrificed the safeness in exchange for efficiency to save the cost.

So we were thinking that something huge accident was going to happen at the stadium during the ceremony.
However, it turned out to be the opening ceremony was executed without audiences sitting in the stadium.

< Speculation >

This is my personal speculation.
Olympic committee decided not to let audiences sit the stadium except the front stage which was exceptionally built with hard concrete.
They just didn’t want to run a risk of triggering the death toll from the collapsed stadium on the first day of Olympic games. If it did happen, it would be a huge human error accident in Olympic history.

Another reason could be, 6 days prior to the opening ceremony, they held a rehearsal ceremony with 20,000 volunteers in the stadium, and they encountered many problems.
First problem was that people couldn’t get inside the stadium because ticket reading machines didn’t work due to freezing cold temperature.
The officials were at first going to practice body check to prevent terrorism but because everything went malfunction and volunteers were kept hanging in freezing cold temperature, thus Korean volunteers were running out of their patience and becoming antsy, the officials let all volunteers in the stadium without body check or checking their ticket. I think the official must have realized that they couldn’t prevent terrorism if a lot of audiences came to visit the opening ceremony.

Once people went inside the stadium, people were exposed to minus 16 degree in Celsius (3.2 degrees in Fahrenheit) with blowing wind because there were no wind proof walls. (Hahaha)
It was way colder than outside of stadium because people were positioned higher than ground so that minus 16 degree freezing cold wind directly blew their bodies! (Hahaha)
It was like "Come on! Let us in! It's too cold outside! We're going to be frozen to death! Hurry up!" So the officials say "Okay! Come inside! Hurry up!" Then it turned out to be way colder inside than outside. (Hahaha)

After about an hour passed, people began to leave the stadium because it was unbearably too cold to withstand.
It is said that there was one of the volunteers left the stadium while screaming in pain “My toe fingers are going to get torn apart!” because he was wearing regular athletic shoes. (Hahaha)

==( Source )============================
https://mainichi.jp/sportsspecial/articles/20180204/k00/00e/050/203000c
http://blog.livedoor.jp/rakukan/archives/5327449.html
http://japanese.joins.com/article/267/238267.html
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It is reported by Olympic committee that there were about 17,000 volunteers at first but before the opening ceremony, 3,000 people quit. I am sure the rehearsal ceremony was horrible enough experience to make up their decisions. (Hahaha)


==( Source )============================
http://zapzapjp.com/52902146.html
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To be continued.

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