2018 Olympic Host PyeongChang Rebrands To Avoid North Korean Capital Confusion

With a one letter shift from lower to upper case, the South Korean venue for the 2018 Winter Olympics, PyeongChang, "hopes to ensure visitors don’t end up flying to the capital of North Korea by mistake," according to the AFP. The governor of Gangwon province, where the ski resort is located, "acknowledged that the venue name was similar enough to Pyongyang to lead some winter sports fans dangerously astray." Choi Moon-soon said, "Because of the similarity, foreigners can get confused. So, in order to avoid further confusion, we have decided to rebrand it as PyeongChang with an upper-case C." The official website of the 2018 Games organizing committee "already bears the new PyeongChang spelling, as do a series of TV commercials airing on CNN and Eurosport" (AFP, 1/26).