ATHENS -- The South Korean organizers have unveiled a security lamp that will carry the flame for the PyeongChang Olympics when they fly back home from Greece later this week.

The PyeongChang Organizing Committee for the 2018 Olympic & Paralympic Winter Games introduced the safety lantern Sunday that will carry the Olympic flame, which was lit at the Temple of Hera in Olympia, Greece, late Tuesday. The lantern will be used after the South Korean delegation receives the flame at the handover ceremony at the Panathenaic Stadium in the Greek capital on Tuesday.

The organizers will light two lanterns on their delivery of the Olympic flame from Greece to South Korea via a chartered flight. The lanterns, produced by South Korea's Hanwha Group, are 483 millimeters tall and weigh 2.87 kilograms.


Once they are filled with 300 milliliters of paraffin oil, the flame can be kept alive for 52 hours, according to the organizers. The South Korean representatives will have to fly more than 10 hours to land in their homeland with the Olympic flame.

Two teams of three fire wardens will look after the Olympic flame on board without sleeping. The organizers plan to place the lanterns on economy class seats close to fire extinguishers. They will not refuel the lanterns on their way to South Korea.

"Once the flame arrives on board the aircraft, we want to have a festival-like atmosphere," said Kim Chan-hwui, who leads the POCOG's torch relay team. "Going home with the Olympic flame is going to be a really exciting moment for all of us."

The Olympic flame in the lanterns will arrive in South Korea on Wednesday, when the 100-day countdown to the PyeongChang Olympics, as well as the torch relay, starts.

The organizers said that the torch relay on the South Korean soil, which some 7,500 runners will cover 2,018 kilometers nationwide, will include at least two air transportations -- Incheon to Jeju and Jeju to Busan -- and the safety lamps will be used again on those occasions. (Yonhap)