A sports photo exhibition highlighting Korea’s Olympic history opens Monday in Gangneung to celebrate the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games, which kick off a 17-day run Friday.

The exhibition, to be held at Gangneung City Hall until Feb. 27, spotlights memorable moments in the history of Korean sports and the Olympic movement.

There will 380 photographs displayed by Kim Min-jae, a veteran sports photographer who covered numerous Korean and international sporting events for nearly four decades. 

While the photographs span past decades of Korean sports scenes, including the 1988 Seoul Olympics, they focus on the PyeongChang Games and North Korea’s participation in the Winter Olympics.

The photographs include those on PyeongChang’s two unsuccessful bids to win the right to host the 2010 and 2014 Winter Olympics, as well as those of joyful moments of its successful bid made in Durban, South Africa, for the 2018 Olympics.

“I am very privileged to have this chance to chronicle the memorable moments of Korea’s Olympic movement with photographs I took,” Kim said.

Kim said North Korea’s participation in the PyeongChang Olympics encouraged him to include photographs on some past similar events. They include scenes of the two Korean teams marching together under the Korean Peninsula flag at the opening ceremony of the 2006 Doha Asian Games and the 2014 Greece Olympics. Some other pictures also show North Korean female cheering squads at international events held in South Korea. “I hope such scenes will help the two Koreas reconcile and make peace,” Kim said.

The exhibition features many world sports leaders, such as former International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch and Jacques Rogge, as well as the Olympic governing body’s incumbent leader Thomas Bach and Olympic Council of Asia President Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah, who also doubles as the president of the Association of National Olympic Committees.

Kim, who served as an official photographer for both the OCA and the ANOC, held a similar photo exhibition during the 2014 Incheon Asian Games, after which he published a photo album documenting Korea’s participation in the Asian Games.

Kim said that the Gangneung photo exhibition, co-sponsored by the International Sports Press Association and Korea Sports Press Union, also benefited from the generous support of PyeongChang Olympic Organizing Committee President Lee Hee-beom and Gunilla Lindberg, chair of the IOC Coordination Commission for the PyeongChang Games.

He said that after the exhibition, all photographs will be donated to the PyeongChang Olympic Organizing Committee. The exhibition, to be held on the second floor of Gangneung City Hall, is free of charge.

(khnews@heraldcorp.com)