Pyeongchang County

Pyeongchang (Korean pronunciation: [pʰjʌŋtɕʰaŋ]; in full, Pyeongchang-gun [pʰjʌŋtɕʰaŋɡun]) is a county in Gangwon province, South Korea located in the Taebaek Mountains region. It is also home to several Buddhist temples, including Woljeongsa. It is located approximately 180 km (110 mi) east of Seoul, the capital of South Korea. Pyeongchang will host the 2018 Winter Olympics and the 2018 Winter Paralympics.

Geography

The altitude of Pyeongchang is wide-ranging, with 84% of its territory comprising mountains with average elevations of 750 m (2,460 ft).

Its best-known place, the township of Daegwallyeong-myeon, averages between 700 to 800 m (2,300 to 2,600 ft) above sea level, with some areas over 1,000 m (3,300 ft) high. Daegwallyeong-myeon has a monsoon humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification Dwb) with warm, humid summers and long, cold and dry winters (see climate).

Tourism

The area is popular with mountain hikers, especially at the southern part of Mount Seoraksan.

2018 Winter Olympics

The 2018 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XXIII Olympic Winter Games (French: Les XXIIIes Jeux olympiques d'hiver;Hangul: 평창 동계 올림픽; hanja: 平昌 冬季 올림픽; RR: PyeongChang Donggye Ollimpik) and commonly known as PyeongChang 2018, is a major international multi-sport event scheduled to take place from 9 to 25 February 2018, in PyeongChang, South Korea. It will be the first winter Olympics to be held on mainland Asia.

The elected host city was announced on 6 July 2011 by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), after the 123rd IOC Session in Durban, South Africa. Other candidates that applied to host the games were Annecy, France and Munich, Germany. Pyeongchang won on its third consecutive bid, having lost previously to Vancouver in Canada and Sochi in Russia.

It will be the first Winter Olympic Games and second Olympic Games in South Korea; the 1988 Summer Olympics were held in Seoul. Pyeongchang will also be the third Asian city to host the Winter Games after Sapporo, Japan (1972) and Nagano, Japan (1998). It will be the first Winter Olympic Games since 1992 to be held in a ski resort town.

Winter Olympic Games

The Winter Olympic Games (French: Jeux olympiques d'hiver) is a major international sporting event that occurs once every four years. Unlike the Summer Olympics, the Winter Olympics feature sports practiced on snow and ice. The first Winter Olympics, the 1924 Winter Olympics, was held in Chamonix, France. The original five sports (broken into nine disciplines) were bobsleigh, curling, ice hockey, Nordic skiing (consisting of the disciplines military patrol,cross-country skiing, Nordic combined, and ski jumping), and skating (consisting of the disciplines figure skating and speed skating). The Games were held every four years from 1924 until 1936, after which they were interrupted by World War II. The Olympics resumed in 1948 and was again held every four years. Until 1992, the Winter and Summer Olympic Games were held in the same years, but in accordance with a 1986 decision by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to place the Summer and Winter Games on separate four-year cycles in alternating even-numbered years, the next Winter Olympics after 1992 was in 1994.