Pyeongchang’s triumph of the 2018 Winter Olympics is expected to cultivate more than just national pride, paving the way for the South Korean economy to rake in an estimated $27 billion, according to the Korean Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade, a state-run think tank.
The win may also reduce the nation’s unemployment rate – which sits at 3.3% as of 2010 – by creating roughly 230,000 jobs up until the 2018 games, KIET found in a study.
Pyeonchang beat out Munich, Germany, and Annecy, France, a small resort town located in the French Alps, for a chance to host the Games in 2018. Prior to Wednesday’s announcement, Pyeonchang had failed in bids for the 2010 and 2014 Winter Olympics.
This will not be the first time South Korea has lit the Olympic Torch on their home soil.
Seoul played host to the 1988 Summer Olympic Games, which saw the tightest security of any Olympics to date amid fears of a possible North Korean attack, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Although the 38th parallel remains highly volatile, the International Olympic Committee said Pyeongchang was a “low-risk” environment for the games.
The 2018 games will also mark the first time a Winter Olympics has been held in an Asian city outside of Japan.
South Korean experts believe that the potential economic benefits of 2018’s games could be twice as large as those of the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup, and four times larger than the 1988 Seoul Olympics, according to Arirang News, Korea’s global television station.
