Inter-Korean Olympic Hockey Tickets Skyrocket

(ATR) Tickets are scarce for Olympic matches featuring the joint North and South Korean women’s ice hockey team.

Two of the unified Korean team’s matches in the group stage against Switzerland and Japan have already sold out on ticket marketplace StubHub, with only a few tickets remaining for the team’s match against Sweden.

The ticket price for the Korea vs. Sweden match is currently listed at $672.45 U.S. dollars on StubHub. Tickets for the match are triple the price of the group match between Japan and Sweden which are listed at $224.15.

Korea faces off against Switzerland on Feb. 10, Sweden Feb. 12 and Japan Feb. 14. All matches will take place at the Kwandong Hockey Center in the Gangneung venue cluster.

Ticketing website CoSport lists all ice hockey matches through Wednesday, Feb. 14 as sold out.

Tickets for the joint Korean team’s matches became scarce once the proposal to create the team with North and South Korean players was announced on Jan. 17, according to Korea Joongang Daily. The International Olympic Committee then confirmed the proposal and provided more clarity about the composition of the team on Jan. 20 in Lausanne.

Twelve North Korean athletes will join the roster of the pre-existing South Korean team, more than half of the total North Korean athlete contingent who will compete in the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics. Head coach Sarah Murray must select three North Korean athletes to make the official 22-person roster for each match, leaving three of the 23 South Korean skaters off the team.

Murray has said she intends to play the North Koran athletes primarily in the third line.

The unified Korean team will compete as Korea (COR) while the 10 other North Korean athletes will compete for the DPRK and their respective uniforms. The COR uniforms will be the only at the Games that were not designed by U.S. manufacturer Nike.

Nike had designed a uniform for South Korea, but these won’t be worn given the addition of North Korean athletes. Finnish apparel company Tackla designed the unified team uniforms that will feature the entire Korean peninsula, according to a report from Yonhap.

The report adds that the Korean team will wear the new uniforms for the first time on Feb. 4 when they play an Olympic tune-up match in Incheon against Sweden.

Written by Kevin Nutley

Forgeneral comments or questions, click here.

25 Years at #1: Your best source of news about theOlympics is AroundTheRings.com, for subscribersonly.