The day after: Pyeongchang breathes, bids Olympics farewell

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea (AP) — From volunteers to toughen team to the joint Korea ladies folks’s hockey personnel, folk from many cultures expose farewell to every various and to the 2018 Frosty climate Olympics on Monday as a swath of the eastern Korean Peninsula readied itself for something new: relative normalcy.

Seven years after a a hit Olympic expose that changed its folk and its landscape without ruin, Pyeongchang exhaled.

« Farewell! Bye bye! Gamsahamnida! » volunteers utilizing the Korean phrase for « thank you » shouted to departing buses in Gangneung, the coastal metropolis shut to Pyeongchang the establish many events were held.

Workers yanked down paper signs by the loads and busloads of Olympians, journalists and toughen staff rolled in opposition to educate stations and highways Monday within the aftermath of a Frosty climate Video games that was once as political as it was once athletic.

International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach echoed that sentiment within the closing ceremony Sunday evening, announcing that the centerpiece political match of the video games — a joint Koreas personnel marching collectively and, in some cases, competing collectively was once a beacon for a afraid world.

« With your joint march it’s good to need gotten shared your faith in a light future with all of us, » Bach acknowledged. « You’ve got shown our sport brings folk collectively in our very fragile world. You’ve got shown how sport builds bridges. »

The Korean ladies folks’s hockey personnel did that for obvious.

Thrown collectively a correct few weeks earlier than the video games, gamers from North and South were thrust collectively to make a hobble of it. With the assistance of their Canadian coach, they came collectively as a competent, if no longer in particular tremendous, personnel that captured the eye of many Olympics watchers.

Alongside the system, they developed what they uniformly verbalize was once camaraderie, and even mountainous affection. On Monday morning, on the athletes’ village, they acknowledged their goodbyes with tears and extended fingers.

« I feel really irregular, » acknowledged South Korean hockey player Choi Ji-yeon. « I told them to bewitch care and never get ill and meet again later. »

She added: « If they were folk whom we can continue to preserve enthusiastic and meet again, then I’d feel greater, but I’d never be ready to meet them again. »

Their governmental counterparts were exhibiting signs of conversation to boot. The detente completed thru the Olympic connections between North and South Korea suits the longtime dreams of the South’s president, Moon Jae-in, who has advocated engagement with Kim Jong Un’s Pyongyang regime.

That passed off on the hole and closing ceremonies, each with U.S. representatives looking on from nearby — Vice President Mike Pence for the hole, first daughter and presidential adviser Ivanka Trump for the closing Sunday evening.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, a patron of South Korea and a loud opponent of the North’s nuclear program, is watching the contacts closely, in particular after South Korea’s presidential place of work acknowledged for the length of the closing ceremony that the North was once willing to preserve talks with the USA.

Washington viewed that building warily. White Dwelling press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, with Ivanka Trump on her South Korea Olympic shuttle, issued a written assertion to that fabricate after the closing ceremony.

« We are able to search if Pyongyang’s message on the present time, that it’s willing to preserve talks, represents the first steps along the direction to denuclearization, » she acknowledged. « Within the duration in-between, the USA and the area must continue to make definite that North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs are a dreary stop. »

North Korea’s legit data agency, KCNA, identified for its invective in opposition to the USA and the Seoul govt, has been taking part in it low key by these Olympics. On Monday, it issued a synopsis of the video games that was once considerable for its anodyne tone.

« When the gamers of the north and south of Korea collaborating within the twenty third Frosty climate Olympics and various gamers and brokers of various worldwide locations and role from across the area entered the stadium, the spectators welcomed them with applause, » it practically whispered.

Distinction that with this dispatch hours earlier in regards to the USA: « Lets no longer ever like face-to-face talks with them even after a hundred years or 200 years. Right here is neither an empty talk nor any possibility. The U.S. will must pay dearly for boring and wild vituperation. »

Twelve hours later, data of its willingness to verbalize emerged from Seoul.

As for the Olympics and the eye and folk they elevate to this fairly faraway plateau of northeastern South Korea, it isn’t comparatively done but. The Paralympic Video games, held straight after the Olympics utilizing the equivalent amenities, will seemingly be staged from March 9 to 18, albeit with a decrease profile and attendance.

But for about a days, no longer lower than, with online page online online page online visitors cones down and most Olympic checkpoints eradicated, Pyeongchang can bewitch a breather as the eyes of the area shift in other locations.

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Ted Anthony has been Asia-Pacific data director for The Connected Press since 2014. Educate him on Twitter and Instagram at @anthonyted.

Extra AP Olympic coverage: https://wintergames.ap.org