The torch for next year’s PyeongChang 2018 Paralympic Winter Games, unveiled to the public on Sept. 8, has a braille inscription of the Olympic slogan in both Korean and English.
By Sohn JiAe
Photos = Organizing Committee for the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games
The Paralympic torch was lit in Seoul in 1988 for the first time to kick off the Summer Paralympics that year, an international sports festival for disabled athletes. Exactly 30 years later in 2018, the torch will be reignited at next year’s PyeongChang 2018 Paralympic Winter Games.
On Sept. 8, the PyeongChang Olympic Organizing Committee unveiled the PyeongChang Paralympic torch, along with the relay route and its plans to select torch bearers, at the Korea Press Center in Seoul.
The 70-cm torch is white, representing snow and ice. The bottom has a pentagonal hole and the torch can be fixed to a wheelchair. On the handle, it has the Paralympic keywords “courage, determination, inspiration and equality.” The Winter Olympic slogan “Connected. Passion” (하나된 열정) is inscribed in braille in both Korean and English.
Singer Seon smiles as he holds up a PyeongChang Paralympic torch on Sept. 8 during the torch unveiling ceremony.
On March 2, 2018, a series of Paralympic torches will be ignited on Jeju Island, in Anyang-si, Gyeonggi-do Province, in Nonsan-si, Chugncheongnam-do Province, in Gochang-gun, Jeollabuk-do Province, and in Cheongdo-gun, Gyeongsangbuk-do Province.
On March 3, the flames will come together at the World Peace Gate at the Olympic Park in southern Seoul, where the torch from the Seoul 1988 Paralympics has been enshrined. Torches from Stoke Mandeville in the U.K., the home of today’s Paralympic Games, and from Beijing, China, the next Paralympic host nation, will join the flames via video.
The torch will be carried across Gangwon-do Province across a total of 2,018 km by 800 torch bearers grouped in pairs until the Paralympic Games kicks off on March 9.
“The torch relay for the PyeongChang 2018 Paralympic Winter Games is a very meaningful event to us, in that the world’s first-ever Paralympic torch relay took place in Seoul 30 years ago,” said President Lee Hee-beom of the PyeongChang Organizing Committee. “The torch relay will be a journey of breaking down barriers among the able-bodied and the disabled, a journey for unity and companionship. As the official torch slogan goes, ‘Let everyone shine,’” he added.
jiae5853@korea.kr
