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2 PyeongChang: Melted
dreams By James Card
PYEONGCHANG - I've been visiting
PyeongChang county in south central Gangwon
province for the past eight years. I sometimes go
in the winter but not for the skiing. I quit
skiing in South Korea a year ago, frustrated with
the mediocre slopes and poor quality snow. I come
to the region for a few trout streams that tend to
fish well during the dry, semi-snowless winter
months.
Yes, semi-snowless could be an
adjective to describe the countryside of
PyeongChang county. Most sorely lacking is
snow,
and snow is needed to make a mountain town that
people want to visit. South Korean winters are dry
and precipitation is scarce. Snow comes in spurts
and there are a few good dumpings a year and then
the white stuff quickly melts off.
I was
fly-fishing a stream in the PyeongChang region
this winter. I wore a light shirt in the afternoon
and mayflies hatched from the water. The ground
was barren, brown and the International Olympic
Committee (IOC) inspection team was arriving the
upcoming weekend. The only snow to be seen held
tight on the upper reaches of north-facing
mountain peaks. It was one of the warmest winters
on record.
There are some regional snow
festivals in Korea (in Taebaaek and Naejangsan)
and because of the lack of regular snowfall,
festival activities often risk being canceled.
There is one account of organizers resorting to
rituals offering cow heads as a sacrifice for snow
from the sky. Now and then there is a heavy
snowfall, which usually put roadways into total
chaos, and just before the IOC team arrived in
PyeongChang last February, they luckily got the
snow they prayed for. If the IOC team had arrived
a week earlier, they would have laughed and
returned to the plane.
In winter sports,
snow quality is everything and the PyeongChang
area ski resorts and all Korean ski resorts for
that matter, must rely on snow machines to
effectively cover the ski slopes. Nobody gets on
an airplane to ski man-made snow, but there is one
exception: Southeast Asians who have never seen
snow before and don't know the difference between
good powder and man-made ice slicks. Part of
PyeongChang's promotional theme was of spreading
winter sports throughout Asia and the only way
they can attract foreign skiers is to market to
the clueless beginners that live in the tropics.
That is a crafty idea, but ski resorts are
not created equal and skiers and snow-seekers will
find the resorts with the best snow. A case study
for PyeongChang could be in nearby Japan. On
Hokkaido, the ski area of Niseko is booming with
Australians who fly up to ski world-class powder
that averages 12.7 meters a year. Japan is
closer for them and it saves them the dateline jet
lag when flying to the ski resorts of the American
Rockies or the Alps. With Australian skiers
driving the market, local entrepreneurs advertise
and cater in the English language. Three main
resorts are interconnected with a shared lift
ticket and back-country skiing abounds in
waist-deep powder. Pizza joints, bakeries and cozy
bars cater to the foreign skiers and it's a
happening place.
Contrast that with
PyeongChang and its two ski resorts. Although
Phoenix Park and Yongpyong have slopes that are
authorized by the International Ski Federation,
they are short runs and over before you know it
and they are usually misrepresented.
Black
diamonds (expert) are actually blues (novice) and
blues are actually greens (beginner). The snow is
almost entirely man-made. There are no
back-country, off-trail zones and the runs are
blocked off in a way that it is tough to find a
place to take a mid-slope pee in the woods. The
lift lines are long and the slopes are severely
overcrowded. You have to ask, if serious skiers do
not fly here to go skiing, why should anyone else,
including Olympic athletes?
Of the foreign
skiers that arrive here, most are English teachers
or American soldiers who ski a few times a year
just to get out of the house. Once a year the
diplomatic community is rounded up for the
"Foreigners International Ski Festival". They are
fed with booze and sent off skiing for the day.
The Korean media capitalize on this weekend for
photo ops of foreign skiers to use in brochures
and promotional material to portray this place as
a vibrant international scene, which of course it
is not.
Vancouver-Whistler won the right
to host the 2010 Winter Olympics beating, out
PyeongChang because it has everything that
PyeongChang doesn't. Whistler has been rated as
the top ski resort in the world by ski media
around the globe. The top ranking is consistent:
year after year when ski magazines and media rate
the best ski towns and resorts, Whistler is on the
list, if not at the top of it. Men's Journal
ranked Whistler as "the model" mountain town.
One of the hallmarks of a great mountain
town is an apres-ski scene and the
surrounding amenities of good restaurants, bars
and entertainment. At PyeongChang's two resorts
the apres-ski scene involves a K-pop
discotheque, karaoke sing-a-longs and poorly
rendered versions of overpriced Western cuisine.
The architecture and ambience is as if Joseph
Stalin designed the resort with a Hello Kitty
motif.
So you drive back into the actual
town of PyeongChang, a few miles away from the ski
area. It is a nondescript country burg; a
crossroad intersection forms the downtown. What is
most stunning is the lack of any cosmopolitan
feel, or even a sense of style or identity and
except for the "Yes! PyeongChang," signs, one
could be transported to any other small Korean
town and not know the difference. There is a
complete absence of any rustic mountain town
charm.
Your only options for accommodation
are a few love hotels. Your options for dining are
standard Korean fare (including dog soup, always a
controversy when Korea hosts a large sporting
event), Koreanized Chinese food and a take-out
chicken joint. Your options for drinks are three
brands of watery lagers, or soju- a cheap
liquor that is used to get drunk fast.
Entertainment is nil other than basement karaoke
rooms hosted by feel-up girls.
Once you
wake up with a soju-hangover, a good cup of
coffee is impossible to find, along with
breakfast. South Korea isn't a breakfast culture
and hunting down any restaurant open at seven in
the morning is a gruesome task.
In many
ways these small details are linked to South
Korea's massive tourism deficit, with huge numbers
of Koreans traveling overseas and few foreign
visitors coming into the country. With flagging
inbound tourists, South Korea now is focusing on
"forced
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