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Games of the XXIV Olympiad: Seoul 1988

Seoul 1988 Summer Olympics

Last modified: 2023-06-10 by zachary harden
Keywords: olympic games | seoul | games | korea | ioc | cio |
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[Seoul Olympics, 1988 (Korea)] image by Zoltan Horvath, 28 January 2014


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Overview

The 1988 Summer Olympics were held between 17 September to 2 October 1988 in Seoul, South Korea. They were the second summer Olympic Games to be held in Asia. Seoul was chosen to host the Summer Games against Nagoya, Japan, the other applicant city. In Seoul 159 nations were represented by a total of 8391 athletes, 263 events were held 23 sports.
Zoltan Horvath, 28 January 2014


The Flag

Its flag was white with its emblem placed in the center of the flag. The emblem features a samtaeguk pattern. A samtaeguk is a traditional Korean pattern and visual image which represents Korea. This pattern is widely used as decoration on fans, gates of Korean-style homes, artefacts, and folk crafts. The Olympic emblem features patterns in two forms, centripetal and centrifugal; the centripetal motion represented the people of the world coming together in Korea, thus symbolising worldwide harmony, while the centrifugal motion represented a march onward in search of man's lasting happiness and prosperity.
Source: http://www.olympic.org/seoul-1988-summer-olympics
Image of flag: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-P6irYGYXJaY/UE8latFyFGI/AAAAAAAAC8M/nqbNrJY9H4M/s1600/Seoul+Olympiad.jpg.
Zoltan Horvath, 28 January 2014

There's an official 올림픽공원 (English: Olympic Park) in Seoul, where they feature all countries' flags that participated in those (summer) Olympics (https://ko.wikipedia.org) even though some countries' flags do not exist anymore as countries (i.e. Zaire) or have since modified its flag (i.e. Afghanistan). The park is an Olympic Park built to host the 서울 하계 올림픽 1988 (English: 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics), officially known as the Games of the XXIV Olympiad. It is located in Seoul, in 송파구 (English: Songpa-gu (District), in 방이동 (English: Bangi-dong (neighborhood)). Source: http://www.olympicpark.co.kr/jsp/english/contents/overview/introduction.jsp.

There's a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f3ZlZZuxlg) of this park showing the flags featured in it, and one can see the official 1988 Seoul Olympic flag (from 2:22 onwards).
Esteban Rivera, 2 November 2017


Striped Flag

[Seoul Olympics, 1988 (Korea)] image located by Peter Hans van den Muijzenberg, 2 November 2017

I'm a bit at a loss about this flag offered at Ebay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/311990077278. It's a 36"by 39" flag of four
horizontal stripes, green, red, yellow, and blue. Near the hoist, but not touching it, is an overlay of white bearing the logo, the white having a straight hoist-wise edge near the hoist, but a kind of sinusoid edge on the other side. On the flyward remaining space of the stripes, placed somewhat equidistant from that edge, are the texts "Host City", "the 24th", "Olympiad", and "Seoul 1988", in a white, bold, sans serif, allcaps font. The full image can be seen at https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/TH4AAOSws6ZZ87yd/s-l1600.jpg.

Though this flag includes the same logo on white, it leaves a completely different impression, and I have no idea of its purpose. The seller indicates that the previous owner claimed that the flag had flown at the Olympic Village. That would seem to make its purpose pretty clear. However, another specimen can be found at https://www.ebay.com/itm/262218498916 that has been flown in downtown Seoul. Image at https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/zOQAAOSw9NxTvY5P/s-l1600.jpg.
Peter Hans van den Muijzenberg, 2 November 2017