Pyeongchang 2018: Beyond the Games
Sporting triumphs, ultra-modern venues, diplomatic breakthroughs: These are the images that dominate the coverage of this year's Winter Olympics. South Korean photographer Jun Michael Park went off the beaten track.
The Olympics' secret capital
"I like Gangneung. It's much smaller than Seoul and the pace of life is slower," says Seoul-based photographer Jun Michael Park. While this year's Winter Olympics are named after Pyeongchang, a conglomerate of small mountain towns, many see Gangneung as the heart of the spectacle. The coastal city with 214,000 inhabitants hosts the ice events which are particulary popular with South Koreans.
Business as usual
The Olympic run on Gangeung is unlikely to pay off for these women selling dried fish at Jungang Market, as most visitors spend more time at the Olympic Park than in the city center. For Jun Michael Park, exploring the town with its long fishing tradition feels like walking down memory lane. "There are many quiet alleyways, kind of forgotten and left to decay."
Sleepy towns instead of global cities
As the smallest host since 1994, Pyeonchang stands out against its former competitors - metropolises like Vancouver and Turin. The county in the Taebaek Mountains, located 130 kilometers east of Seoul, consists of seven scarcely populated townships and a town with 10,000 residents.
Ice fishing eldorado
What looks like a spontaneous power nap is in fact a focused search for the next catch. This year, visitors to Pyeongchang's annual trout fishing festival are braving the region's freezing temperatures and strong winds against the backdrop of the Winter Olympics. The fish are caught by drilling holes into the frozen surface of a stream. Local restaurants prepare the catch.
Oranje on tour
Since the Netherlands are speed skating's dominant power, large numbers of Dutch fans traveled to the Olympics. Jun Michael Park met these friends and relatives of short-track speed skater Lara van Ruijven in Gangneung. "They wanted to try some local food, so they walked into a snack joint where I was having Ddeokbokki (a spicy and chewy rice cake) and Soondae (stuffed pig intestine)."
Thawing relations
In the cold of Pyeongchang and Gangneung, the warm welcome offered to North Korea as well as Kim Jong Un's bombshell invitation to South Korean president Moon Jae-in seem to have defrosted tensions between the bitter neighbors. This North Korean flag hangs on a building in the Olympic village in Gangneung. Raising the North's flag is usually prohibited in South Korea.
Cheering for a united Korea
While all Olympic teams are an expression of a country's hopes and dreams, this is particularly true when it comes to the joint Korean women's ice hockey team. These fans enthusiastically waved flags showing the whole Korean peninsula at a rally in Gangneung. It's the first time in 27 years that the hostile countries have fielded a joint team at a major sports event.
Reactionary forces
Not everyone welcomes the exercise in sports diplomacy. Jun Michael Park passed this protest staged in Pyeongchang at the opening weekend of the Games. According to him, most participants were supporters of former South Korean President Park Geun-hye, who was impeached in March 2017 following a large-scale corruption scandal. "They want the US to bomb North Korea and to reinstate Park."
A site of pain and hope
According to South Korea, any future dialogue with the North would involve discussing the reunification of families separated by the Korean War. The Goseong Unification Observatory, located 130 kilometers from Gangneung, offers a view of the Demilitarized Zone dividing the peninsula. "The ribbons display wishes for peace and reunification, left by visitors," Jun Michael Park explains.
Ubiquitous Olympics
Sports enthusiasm turns up in the most unexpected places, like this residential house in the village of Hoenggye. It features paintings of Winter Olympics and Paralympics mascots all the way back to the 1992 Games in Albertville, Canada. This year's mascots are a white tiger and a black bear - two animals deeply rooted in Korean culture.