2018 Pyeongchang Games: A brief overview

The 2018 Pyeongchang Games will take place in a country with a limited winter sports tradition and far from the core markets of Europe and North America -- making local attendance crucial to ensuring the grandstands are full. But in the first phase of South Korean sales earlier this year, organisers allocated 162,000 tickets in an application lottery -- just over a quarter of their 600,000 target. There are 1.18 million seats available for the two-week event next February. Of those, 70 percent have been alloted to South Korean residents, with 30 percent going to overseas fans and sponsors through separate processes. In all, POCOG said, 229,000 spots had been sold up to July 17, the latest figures available, including 177,000 to overseas fans. The South has successfully staged several international sporting events over decades despite military tensions on the peninsula, including the 1988 Seoul Olympics -- which took place only months after a mid-air explosion killed all 115 people on board a South Korean plane, with Seoul blaming a terror attack by the North (Video credit: SNTV).