The 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics and Inter-Asian Connections in South Korea

Abstract

East Asian countries are historically tied to each other, and sport mega-events provide an important venue in which we can observe the contemporary and changing relations between countries and their people. This study illuminates how the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics provided concentrated exposure to encountering Asian countries and athletes in both mediated and personal ways. It examines how the PyeongChang Olympics contributed to transforming South Korea’s structures of feeling towards its neighbouring countries. By analyzing Korean news reports and online comments on the Olympics, it explores South Korea’s changing attitudes, responses, and reactions to North Korea, Japan, and China. An analysis of the media representation and online responses both configures and reflects the changing characteristics of nationalism in Korea in tandem with the growing importance of its regional connections under the influence of globalization. This study shows that the PyeongChang Olympics serves as a platform for crystallizing regional connectivity and sensitivity both in positive and negative ways. It contends that the national-regional-global frame is both useful and necessary for understanding the impacts of sport mega-events not only on the reconstituted national and regional identities of the local society and people but also on societal and political relations in contemporary East Asia.