bidding for the 2014 (2014!) Winter Olympics

My last few blogs were not very much about Gangwondo so to get back on subject a little, I decided to look at Pyongchang's bid for the 2014 Winter Olympics. The subject caught my eye as I looked through some archives at the Korea Times.
I like the Times as it seems more of a NEWspaper than a tourism brochure like the Herald. However, I had to struggle through some pretty bad writing in the articles I read. For example, I read about Vancouver, Canada winning the 2010 Winter Olympics and plans for the next bid.

Last year, the city lost the bid to Vancouver, Canada, by
a slight margin in the second vote, even though it came
first in the first vote but not by enough to secure the
right to host the 2010 Winter Olympics. The failure
stirred the nation, following allegations that Kim Un-yong,
a career politician and an IOC member, interfered with
Pyongchang’s chance of capturing the right in order to
win vice presidency of the global sports governing
body. Kim actually won the post.

The IOC will choose the host city for the 2010 Winter
Games in its 2007 general meeting. Among other
countries competing for the prestigious winter event are
Norway, Sweden and Austria. It is reported that
Pyongchang has a strong possibility of winning the
bid as IOC member countries favor granting the
right to an Asian country in order to give equal
opportunities to all continents.

I included the bit about Canada purely for patriotism (I can be forgiven bad writing at least inasmuch as it is only my hobby, not my profession). The second paragraph is what I struggled with until I realized they meant "The IOC will choose the host city for the 201[4] Winter Games....". The first paragraph of the article does correctly list the date as '2014' but the paragraph about my quoted section again says '2010'.

That was the Dec 24 paper and I guess people can happily be forgiven mistakes on Christmas Eve.
On the 28th, I read:

As Pyongchang county practically claimed the
South Korean bid for the 2016 Winter Olympics,
Kangwon Province on Monday announced it will
launch a full-scale campaign for the hosting
competition.

Wrong again: two years late this time.

Muju expected to have support for it's slopes from the Pyongchang committee but the International Ski Federation had rejected Muju's bid for "Technical and Environmental issues". As I understand it, to make the Nagano slopes long enough, Japan had to make inroads into a national park or some such. I guess if the mountain isn't tall enough, it's not tall enough; Hugh Grant and those Welshmen notwithstanding.

Anyway, the Olympics are filled with politics domestically and internationally and that is the real story here. I wish Pyeongchang the best in it's attempt to host 2014.