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GANGNEUNG, South Korea — It turns out climate change is real.
At least it seems that way for a Bay Area denizen who left his sun-splashed home only to arrive in a land of bracing winds and frigid temperatures.
It’s going to be bronze, silver and C-O-L-D for the 23rd edition of the Winter Olympics.
“It’s normal,” resident Kim Wol Dong said this week when asked about winter climate along this neck of the East Sea. Not wanting to disappoint, Kim quickly added through an interpreter, “It’s warmer today.”
Everyone is an optimist as the Pyeongchang Games are set to open Friday night, local time, in what has turned into a return of the Cold War — even though one of the highlights is set to be the Korean Thaw in the form of a unification march of North and South Korean athletes.
It’s even too cold for proper ski racing as the Games dawn. Word at the Jeongseon Alpine Center is that some athletes have trashed their $1,000 training skis after testing the frozen course.
“They’re turning their skis into garbage real fast,” a start technician told Reuters.
Although it has been hovering between 15 and 20 degrees in the mountain town of Pyeongchang, bracing winds from Siberia have left everyone shivering ahead of the 17-day sports festival — the first of three Olympics to be held in Asia.
Part of the weather problem can be blamed on Vancouver and Sochi, the past two Winter Games locales that were downright balmy. The previous Pyeongchang Organizing Committee chief had warned four years ago in Russia, “Bring your coat. It’s going to be cold.”
He didn’t laugh when making the pronouncement as Korea prepared to hold its second Olympics in history. We now understand why.
American cross-country skier Erik Bjornsen has his own special remedy against such temperatures: “I’m just trying to eat quite a bit and insulate my body,” he said Wednesday.
But Lake Tahoe downhill skier Bryce Bennett dismissed concerns.
“We’re ski racers, we deal with being cold a lot,” he said.
The winds are expected to subside and temperatures to rise heading into the first week of competition. But Koreans used to such brutal winter conditions seemed armed and ready to help the thousands of foreigners descending on their heretofore overlooked region.
Wang Se Jin, 16, chased after a visitor the other day to hand out a hand warming packet. She bowed after forking over the gift. More hand packets were distributed at a mobile bank where tourists exchange money.
Such exchanges should warm up feelings for Gangwon Province across the Peninsula from Seoul. However, the big freeze is just part of what has visitors on edge. More than 1,000 Olympics workers were quarantined in the wake of an outbreak of norovirus. The country deployed military personnel this week to compensate for the lost workers.
None of this dampened the spirits of local residents who seem accommodating — even when tourists butcher the pronunciation of their city. No, Gangneung isn’t “GANG-nu-en.” Visitors are better off just pronouncing it condom, or, if you want to be perfect, “Kan-dum.”
The city that will play host to the Olympic ice sports lies along the Han River that spills into the sea. It’s known for seafood and coffeehouses. It even has a district known as “Coffee Street” and boasts of Asia’s first coffee festival.
These robust people of 200,000 also drink the more traditional tea. But it’s nice to see them develop a coffee addiction without planting a Starbucks on every corner.
City life also revolves around the Gangneung Seongnam Market located in the city’s central corridor. It is a sprawling warren of tiny shops filled with weathered vendors offering textiles, clothes, cosmetics but mostly food.
The bottom floor is a dedicated fish market where the women merchants slice, dice and chop freshly caught sea creatures while preparing them into tasty morsels for a devoted clientele. A spry octopus tried to slip away when a vendor grabbed it with a prong and slapped it back onto her table. It was clear who ran the show at that stall.
“I want people to come here and know us,” Kim said of why he embraces the Olympics coming to his hometown.
Olympic organizers have erected a viewing stage in a plaza between the big market and a smaller one called Wolhwa Folk Market.
As temperatures warmed up Wednesday afternoon — relatively speaking, anyway — a dozen musicians marched through the streets pounding drums that made them close cousins to Brazilian percussionists of Salvador.
The leader said through an interpreter they were part of a traditional group that plays ne-go fung-mul-dan. Adorned in white, puffy pants with an overlay of vibrant colors, he said they planned to have an army of 30 drummers performing in the coming days.
It’s all part of the slow build-up to the Winter Games, with an emphasis on winter.
“I’m a Minnesota girl, and we’re racing on a golf course and it’s super cold,” U.S. cross-country skier Jessie Diggins said. “I could not ask for more.”
It was almost enough to warm our hearts.
