The Olympic Park: a hub for sport, culture and the natural world
The Olympic Park was one of the main projects of the urban renewal programme intended to improve the city’s urban spaces in terms of green areas and refurbishment. Some venues were built to host sports events, and the Park was redesigned after the Games to become a giant open-air sculpture exhibition site. Frequently used by locals and visited by tourists, the Park is a popular site for recreation and sports activities. It is a unique place where nature, culture and sport are harmoniously combined.
The Olympic Park hosts historic remains from the Baekje Era alongside modern, state-of-the-art sports stadiums, a forest and spacious green areas. Today, the Park not only houses the country’s largest sports arena, but has also become a place where Seoul residents come to relax and unwind. The facilities built for the Olympic Games, such as the swimming pool, gymnastics arena, tennis courts, fencing gymnasium and velodrome, are still regularly used and are extremely popular with the local population.
The Olympic Park is divided into four zones, focusing on arts and culture, recreation and sport, environment and history. The environment and history zones, located in the north-west part of the Park, feature a walking trail beside the ancient fortress, as well as educational panels with information about the local environment. In the southern part of the Park, the arts and culture zone includes the SOMA Museum of Art and an outdoor sculpture park. This features over 200 sculptures by emerging and well-known national and international artists, making it one of the top five sculpture parks in the world.
Furthermore, the Korea Sports Promotion Foundation, the entity responsible for managing the legacies of the Olympic Games Seoul 1988, has implemented environmentally-friendly methods of maintaining the Park. They focus on enhancing the ecological value of the Park and have introduced ecosystem restoration projects that have transformed some areas of the Park into rich habitats for various animal and plant species.