2018 Olympics: South Korea Continues Tradition of Winter Games in Far East

The 2018 Winter Olympics will be held in Pyeongchang, South Korea, marking the third time an East Asian nation host hosted the Games. 

The 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan was the first time the event was held in the Far East. The event then returned to Japan in 1998 for the Nagano Games.

Sochi, Russia will play host in 2014, and on Wednesday, July 6, 2011, the South Korean delegation received the delightful news that they would have their turn in 2018. This is the first time the country has hosted the event.

Pyeongchang is a tiny city in the Taebaek Mountains, with a population of 47,000. The bid to host the games in the city received 63 of the 95 votes, according to the BBC. 

The same report quotes Lucy Williamson, a BBC correspondent in Seoul, describing the reaction in South Korea:

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People were out on the streets in the early hours of the morning to hear the announcement. After two failed bids and a decade of waiting, the celebrations they've bottled up for years were expressed with concerts and fireworks.

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There will be no shortage of enthusiasm when the Games arrive, and it will be a wonderful celebration of new opportunities.

The fact that the country has never hosted the games before was a large part of its bid. As ESPN notes:

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Under the slogan "New Horizons," Pyeongchang drove home the theme that it deserved to win on a third try by offering the potential of spreading the Olympics to a lucrative new market and become a hub for winter sports in the region.

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The 2018 games are sure to offer a fresh, new and exciting take on the 88-year old event.

The last time the Games were held in the same region of the world, groundbreaking innovations were made. The Nagano Organizing Committee used its website to publish up-to-date results for the events. This was the first time such information was available during the event, as noted by Olympic.org.

Now, live results and live streams are a standard part of Olympic coverage. But the South Koreans may still have plans to unveil something dramatically different for the 2018 games.

The International Olympic Committee made a wise choice to put the games in South Korea, and it will offer winter sports fans an unpredictable and fascinating event.