Thursday, April 19, 2007

Spending too much time on the BBC

Here is a brief article stating that South Korea has (for the third time) gotten its bid to host the Asian Games. It beat out Delhi.

Here is a Wikipedia article about the Asian Games because I, for one, knew nothing about them. According to the history there, South Korea has refused to host the games before when they could have because of security concerns. It is probably encouraging then that they feel comfortable to do it in light of the North Korean nuclear issue. Does this signify faith in the negotiations? A lack of perception of a direct threat from North Korea? Or simply a greater emphasis placed on participation and pride in gaining international events like this?

2 comments:

Sean said...

The Asian Games are fun to follow, especially in sports like Track and Field because the level of competition is below that of the college track and field championships in the US.

I don't think this has anything to do with the negotiations, though. First, these bids were submitted long before any talk of six party negotiations. And second, hosting the Asian Games is all about money (and maybe a little pride, although both Seoul and Busan hosted the games before). Events like the Olympics and the Asian Games weren't the huge deals they are now so the competition to host them wasn't as great(see Montreal in '76). But the '84 games in LA proved that you could make a lot of money by hosting the games through proper marketing, and since then, the bidding process has become fierce.

Erin Robinson said...

Ah, ok, that makes sense. Thanks Sean!