Pyeongchang Olympics promoting peace and prosperity

All eyes are on the 23rd Olympic Winter Games and 12th Paralympic Winter Games being held in Pyeongchang, the Republic of Korea, this month. Top athletes will carry their national flags in the opening ceremony which has come to epitomize the international community, and sports fans worldwide enjoy the events. This time there is even more attention on the Games as there is cautious optimism that sports diplomacy may lower the tensions on the Korean Peninsula with athletes from the ROK and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea walking side by side in the opening ceremony. For this, there could be few better places than Pyeongchang, as pyeong means peace and chang means prosperity.

The Olympics and Paralympics help reinforce a set of unifying objectives, placing sport, as the Olympic Charter states, "at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity".

In this spirit, the first Olympics in the ROK held in 1988 served to foster relationships at a time of rapid geopolitical shifts. The games featured many participating nations, including sizeable delegations from both the United States and the Soviet Union. The thaw in relations to which the Olympics contributed led to the establishment of diplomatic relations with neighbors such as Russia and China in the years following the games, and the ROK became a member of the United Nations in 1991.