Awwal 16, 1432 H/Feb 19, 2011, SPA -- South Korea's 2018 Winter Olympics bid is a step above earlier efforts to bring the games to PyeongChang, an official evaluation team said Saturday, according to UPI. The 14-member International Olympic Committee finished a week-long visit to South Korea with an inspection of the alpine town bidding for the games, the South Korean Yonhap News Agency reported. The committee's chairwoman, Gunilla Lindberg, told reporters, "We have seen great progress in the bid from the two previous bids. We have also seen progress in Korean winter sports during the last four years (since PyeongChang's last bid)." PyeongChang, located about 110 miles east of Seoul, lost out to Vancouver, Canada, and Sochi, Russia, in the last two competitions for the Winter Games, and this year faces competition from Munich, Germany and Annecy, France. Cho Yang-ho, chairman of the Hanjin Group shipping conglomerate and head of PyeongChang's bidding committee, told Yonhap he was grateful for the chance to make the bid but warned against premature optimism. "A successful inspection doesn't always lead to a successful bid," he said.
