Children take part in a ceremony to unveil the emblem of the PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games at the National Gugak Center in Seoul on Friday. (Yonhap News)
The official emblem of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games was unveiled on Friday.
The PyeongChang Organizing Committee for the 2018 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (POCOG) held simultaneous ceremonies in two places ― Seoul and PyeongChang in Gangwon Province ― to disclose the emblem.
The emblem was also disclosed worldwide through its website.
The design of the emblem has its roots in Hangeul, the Korean alphabet. The emblem consists of the initial consonants of two Korean words ― Pyeong and Chang.
The consonant for Pyeong is comprised of two horizontal and two vertical bars resembling an open square. It represents a gathering place where the three elements of Korea’s traditional humanism ― called “cheon-ji-in,” which literally means heaven, earth and human ― are in harmony.
Kim Jin-sun, president of the PyeongChang Organizing Committee, speaks during a ceremony that unveiled the official emblem at the National Gugak Center in Seoul on Friday. (Yonhap News)
The official emblem of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games. (Yonhap News)
The first letter from Chang is drawn to look like a star and placed at the upper right side. It symbolizes the epitome of winter sports, snow and ice, as well as athletes’ stellar performances, organizers said.
The color scheme uses five Korean traditional colors, namely white, black, blue/green, yellow and red. Traditionally, blue and green were represented by a single word in Hangeul. Western influence brought a change in the view that green and blue were variations of a single color, and separate words for each color now exist in Hangeul.
These five cardinal colors are found in many aspects of daily life and tradition in Korea. They often appear in Korean clothing, celebrations, martial arts, architecture, art, food and other symbols.
This color scheme also reflects the six colors of the Olympic flag ― blue, yellow, black, green, red and white.
The organizers followed the technical manual of the IOC in the development of the emblem design, and it took about a year to design the emblem.
They said they first devised plans for the emblem in May 2012 and recruited professional designers to come up with 10 candidates to be reviewed by industry experts and scholars from South Korea and abroad.
Their final design choice was submitted to the IOC for final review last December. The IOC gave its approval on Jan. 21, 2013.
The design of the emblem has also been registered for trademark, the organizers added.
President Park Geun-hye sent a message to congratulate on the unveiling of the emblem.
“We now stand on the road to a successful Olympic Games in PyeongChang. We must exert our utmost efforts to present to the world in five years’ time the vitality of Korea and the beauty of Gangwon Province,” Park said in the message read by Yoo Jin-ryong, the minister of culture, sports and tourism.
By Chun Sung-woo (
swchun@heraldcorp.com)
