Korea Olympics Chief's Busy April

(ATR) The final guests have departed and Korean Olympics Committee President Jung Kil Kim can relax a bit. For nearly two weeks starting in late March, he's had to walk a protocol tightrope, at the same time overseeing the logistics of the biggest Olympics event in Korea in years.

Seoul played host to the Association of National Olympic Committees, the IOC Executive Board and the SportAccord convention in rapid succession.

"It may not have been perfect, but we did our best," tells Around the Rings in an interview at his temporary office in the Coex Intercontinental Hotel in Seoul's southern edge.

While the functions and meetings fared well from a logistics and presentation point of view, The IOC had Kim scrambling to comply with ethics rules. He was forced to withdraw invitations extended and accepted by more than a half-dozen Asian IOC members to come to Seoul, members who otherwise would not have come as they were not part of the IOC or ANOC meetings.

"There were some frustrations in preparing for this, because we wanted to give as much to participants, to make them really feel our hospitality," says the KOC leader.

"But the Ethics Commission made it clear that we should not do things excessively and we were unable to do certain things as we had planned."

Kim also had to carefully consider the possibility of former IOC member Un Yong Kim appearing at a dinner function also attended by the IOC President, which did not happen.

And with three Korean cities bidding for international events including the 2014 Olympics, Kim says he talked to all of them prior to the meetings in Seoul to make sure there would be no lapses worthy of ethics complaints.

Hopes It Helps Korea's Image

Protocol battles aside, Kim says the meeting could reinforce the reputation of Korea as an efficient and well-organized Olympics host.

"We want to give them the impression of a Korea that is more well-established and a more sophisticated county than in 1988.

"If we do a good job and the people that participated are satisfied then it would certainly have some positive influence, impact on our endeavors, our projects.

"But, it is not our goal to conclude whether or not this is a success or if it helped us," says Kim.

Too Many Bids

The KOC President admits Korea went overboard with a strategy that saw four different bids emerge from cities for IOC events and major sports events.

"Being a good NOC and country that is very much invlolved in sports, would be to participate, actively, in the sports movement," said Kim by way of explanation for the flurry of bid proposals.

"We didn't realize that this created the idea of a Korea that was too aggressive and too greedy and wants to host everything. We feel that we made the wrong strategical decision to try to bid for too many things at once.

"In the future we will refrain from making such broad and sweeping attempts, concentrate and focus, raise the possibility and the odds of one event," he says.

PyeongChang Number One

"PyeongChang is most important," says Kim in his only English reply of an otherwise translated interview.

Kim admits the initial level of cooperation between the KOC and the 2014 organizers "was not that good".

"Bid committees tend to be more independent and work more separately. There have been some problems due to that, but now we have reached a consensus and we now resolve to have a more unified effort," Kim says.

He says two members of the KOC staff have been working in the bid committee since last year.

Korea Needs Another IOC Member

Kim, whose name is in the hopper for a nomination to the IOC, although well down the list, says that Asia and other parts of the world under-represented on the IOC should be considered first when it comes to electing new members.

He says the IOC is asking for trouble if it doesn't.

"If the IOC is continued to be dominated by Europe, there may be an occasion where other continents, other areas become very unhappy about the situation and try to do something to correct it."

IOC President Jacques Rogge has said that Korea, as wellas other nations with more than one IOC member will be hard pressed to replace those seats, whether they become vacant through retirement or suspensions.

Right now, Korea hangs on to one active member, Kun Hee Lee, also chairman of Samsung.

"He's virtually a recluse, he doesn't socialize," notes Kim, expressing the wish that Lee would become more involved in Olympic matters.

"We don't have any IOC members who can be actively engaged, promoting the 2014 bid, like Austria, Russia, which have IOC members who can legally, without restriction, contact IOC members."

Unified Team Decisions Needed Soon

The prospect of a unified team from North and South Koreas could be the best it's ever been with the coming of the Beijing Olympics, says Kim. But he says time is of the essence.

"If we want to have a unified team for Beijing, we have to have an agreement before we go into regional qualifications. And therefore, by the end of the year at the latest, preferably by the end of August, we have to reach an agreement," he says.

Regardless of his concerns, prodding by the Korean NOC can make not make any difference, says Kim.

"The decision is not made by the NOC of North Korea. It's made by the supreme authorities in North Korea. You never know which way it's going to go. And we really don't know what's going to happen," he says.

"On the positive side, it's being held in Beijing and China has good relations with North Korea."

That factor alone could make this the best shot for a unified team for years.

"If we can't have a unified team for the Beijing Olympics, it's going to be difficult to have a unified team for some time," Kim says.

Besides North Korean leaders agreeing to the unified team, there are questions over the selection of the team that must be answered. How to pick Games-qualified athletes in a fair proportion is the most fundamental issue, says Kim.