The organizing committee for the 2018 Winter Olympics in the South Korean resort town of PyeongChang said Tuesday it is opposed to cohosting the quadrennial competition with North Korea, rejecting a view expressed earlier by the governor of the host city’s home province.

Kwak Young-jin, the committee’s vice president of planning and administration, reiterated PyeongChang’s earlier stance that PyeongChang will not split any event of the Olympics with any other city.

“With the construction for all competition venues already under way, we have already made it crystal clear that there is no point of discussing cohosting of the Olympics,” Kwak said in a hastily scheduled press conference at the committee’s headquarters in Seoul. “We’re concerned that talks of cohosting the Olympics at this stage will only have adverse effects on PyeongChang’s Olympic preparations.”

Kwak’s remarks were in response to comments by Choi Moon-soon, governor of Gangwon Province, on Monday that PyeongChang could consider sharing the Winter Olympics with North Korea.

Saying he wanted to express his personal opinions, Choi told Yonhap on the phone that cohosting the Olympics with North Korea would help make the event “a symbol of peace” on the divided peninsula, even though doing so may be “physically impossible” with the Olympics barely three years away.

Choi said events that don’t require expensive construction of additional facilities could be held north of the border and cited snowboarding as an example.

Choi’s comments were an abrupt departure from PyeongChang’s long-held stance that it would not split the Winter Games with North Korea.

Last month, PyeongChang had to fend off speculation that it was being pressured by the International Olympic Committee to move some events to another country to save construction costs and declare the Olympics will stay in South Korea. (Yonhap)