The 2018 Winter Olympics are being hosted in Pyeongchang, South Korea. But where exactly is South Korea located?
It’s Olympics season once again. The 2018 Winter Olympics are being hosted in Pyeongchang, South Korea, but where exactly is South Korea?
South Korea is a peninsula in Asia off of north east China. If you know where Japan is on a map, the Korean Peninsula is just due west on the mainland. The northern portion of the peninsula is obviously occupied by North Korea and South Korea is on the southern half.
For people who are more visual, here is a map from Google.
The 2018 Winter Olympics are specifically being hosted in Pyeongchang, a county in Gangwon Province. The Olympic Village and mountain portion of the games will be hosted primarily at the Alpensia Resort. The costal cluster of events, namely hockey, skating and curling, will be hosted at the Gangneung Olympic Park.
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The proximity of South Korea to North Korea has been a point of concern for the United States government, especially given how tensions rose over the past year. Pyeongchang is particularly close to North Korea, since it’s located in the north eastern portion of the country just 50 miles away.
For this reason it isn’t expected that Donald Trump will attend the 2018 Winter Olympics and there was a brief suggestion that the United States might withhold athletes from the event out of concerns for their safety. Ultimately that didn’t happen.
South Korea and North Korea reached a truce for the Winter Olympics, but there is some concern that won’t last. North Korea is moving forward with a large military parade just days before the Winter Games begin. Japan went as far as to ask South Korea for evacuation assistance.
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