The 2018 Winter Para-Olympics: Closing Ceremony Pt.3

A continuation of Part 2; https://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/the-2018-winter-para-olympics-closing_19.html

United in Sorrow:

This sequence centred around Lee Chun-hee. A very famous South Korean singer of Gyeonggi Minyo music. This is a style of folk music from the Gyeonggi Province.

Gyeonggi translates as; "The area surrounding the capital." So Gyeonggi-do is the province surrounding the South Korean capital Seoul.

Unfortunately my knowledge of South Korean folk music is not so good that I was able to recognise the exact songs being performed.

Lee Chun-hee performed from the stage's centre platform.

From the sub-platform at roughly 8 o'clock she was accompanied by a modern rock band.

From the sub-platform at roughly 2 o'clock the performance was joined by performers playing traditional drums from the Joseon Dynasty. I think they were specifically Jeolgo drums.

This showed the combination of the old and new. A major theme of the Olympic Closing Ceremony.

The performance was joined by many female dancers in traditional white tunics.

The Olympic Opening Ceremony introduced us to the concept of the Wu Xing.

In Chinese physics this contains the five essential elements which make up everything in the universe. The objective of life is to have these elements exist in balance with each other.

The elements all represent a different phase of development. Most commonly seen in the changing of the seasons. They are all also assigned a colour.

The colour white represents the element Metal and the season of autumn. It's phase of development is withering and decline. It is in autumn leaves wither on the branch and fall from the trees.

So in Asian culture the colour white is associated with death and mourning. This sequence set out to mourn the end of the 2018 games.

However the dancers were also wearing a red sash around their waists. It is very unusual to see this combined with white.

The colour red represents the element Fire and the season of summer. It's phase of development is blooming and growth. Summer being the peak growing season.

So in Asian culture the colour red is associated with prosperity and good fortune. It is not a colour that you would wear at a funeral.

So while this sequence was mourning the end of the 2018 games it was also looking forward to the 2022 games to be held in China. Both through Asian culture and Communism China is heavily associated with the colour red.

The dancers then took off their sashes and revealed them to be half red and half white.

This seemed to be a reference to the red and white flag of Japan. Before the 2022 Winter games in China there are the 2020 Summer games in Japan.

These half red, half white sashes also seemed to resemble the half-and-half scarves you sometimes get at football matches. Each half of the scarf is in the colours of the two teams playing.

It's often used for teams whose fans are closely linked with each other. Liverpool and Celtic being prime examples.

This raised the issue of Unification between the two Koreas. Something which had been a massive theme of the games. Not least with North and South Korea entering the stadium as a single team during the Olympic Opening Ceremony.

Particularly with US Vice President Mike Pence being replaced by US Presidential adviser Ivanka Trump the theme of the Olympic Closing Ceremony touched on the concept of new replacing old.

The Para-Olympic Opening Ceremony was very much a celebration of transformation and equality. Leading to upgraded and mature attitudes.

This sequence then seemed to indicated support for a new approach replacing the old approach to the conflict between the Koreas.

Something like doing away with the notion that the US cannot talk to the DPRK as an equal because the DPRK is not a nuclear power.

As Lee Chun-hee was singing and the drummers were drumming projected lightwaves radiated out from the stages centre platform.

This obviously touched on how an impairment in one sense can be compensated for through another sense. So light and vision being used to compensate for an impairment in hearing.

It also touched on the concept from Physics of the Doppler Effect. I'm sure as you know by now the Doppler Effect means that the frequency of either sound or light waves will change depending on the point at which you observe them.

Mainly though these radiating circles seemed to be a reference to the way that Earthquakes are shown on maps.

On March 11th 2011 (11/3/11) the fourth largest Earthquake ever recorded struck off the coast of the Tohoku region on the northwest of Japan's main Honshu island.

That Earthquake had a magnitude of 9.1. It triggered a Tsunami wave which caused mass devastation across coastal areas. Including triggering a meltdown at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. That in turn cause Japan to shut down all of its Nuclear Power Plants plunging the nation into an energy crisis.

That Earthquake is often referred to as; "3/11." In reference to the 9/11 terror attacks that struck the US in 2001. The Japanese Earthquake did far more damage.

You may have noticed that I end all of my posts with the time and the date in the UK. That is a tradition that began with the 3/11 Earthquake.

I still remember waiting to see whether the massive Tsunami would travel back across the Pacific Ocean and the International Date Line to strike the US the day before it began.

It is the sort of situation that has you really questioning the linear nature of time. No matter what Albert Einstein says in his theories of relativity.

As you may have noticed from the teasing throughout the games Japan and the RoK are regional rivals. However this is more of a friendly, sporting rivalry. It is certainly not the sort of thing that would stop the RoK joining the World in sympathy for Japan over the 3/11 Earthquake.

That Earthquake will be amongst the main considerations as Japan prepares to host the 2020 Summer games.

Tokyo where the games will be held is around 200km (120 miles) south-east of the Fukushima exclusion zone. However just on February 18th (18/2/18) Japan and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) entered into a special pact to protect the games from any nuclear threats.

Then of course there is the issue of Japan's energy crisis. Although that is now easing there remains questions over whether Japan will be able to provide enough electricity to power the games.

At the stage's 8'clock you had a modern rock band. At the stage's 2 o'clock platform you had traditional drummers.

Towards the end of the sequence they were joined by another band on the 4 o'clock platform. This band combined both modern and traditional instruments within their performance.

I think it may have been the same band that appeared during the Parade of Nations during the Olympic Closing Ceremony. The one that was able to combine all the styles of music in one long single song.

Parade of Nations:

It is protocol that each ceremony must include a segment in which the flags of the competing nations are paraded around the arena and then raised.

Although it's not compulsory in the Opening Ceremony many competitors choose to join their flag in the parade. So you have the teams led out in orderly blocks behind their flags.

The Closing Ceremony is more relaxed. So the flags tend to be paraded together. In the Olympics the competitors then enter the arena in one big, chaotic but happy mess.

The Para-Olympics obviously features many competitors who have physical impairments which affect their mobility. This means that they tend to not bother participating in the closing parade. Instead they take their seats within the arena before the ceremony starts.

This Closing Ceremony was no exception. The competitors were already seated in and around the stage with its different platforms. This made the competitors very much part of what is really a celebration of their efforts.

The dancers from the previous sequence actually became the stewards guiding the route of the parade. They used their half red, half white sashes as a sort of rope to mark out the route.

That really emphasised the similarity with football supporters half-and-half scarves.

Commercial Break:

The UK broadcaster felt the need to edit their broadcast of a recording of the Closing Ceremony so it would fit into its time slot.

That time pressure however did not extend to Channel 4 forgoing commercial breaks.

At around 17:45 on 21/3/18 (UK date) I'll pick this up later. Possibly tomorrow.

Edited at around 16:00 on 22/3/18 (UK date) to add;

Whang Youn Dai: 

It was the UK who created the Para-Olympics in 1948. However it was the RoK which brought these Parallel Olympics together on an equal footing with the Olympics at the 1988 Summer games held in Seoul.

That year the RoK also introduced the Whang Youn Dai Award.

Whang Youn Dai is a South Korean woman who at the age of three contracted Polio. This caused her severe and lifelong impairments to her mobility.

However Whang Youn Dai did not allow those impairments to hold her back. In 1963 she qualified as a medical doctor. In itself a woman qualifying as a doctor in the RoK was no mean feat. Let alone as a disabled woman.

As a doctor Whang Youn Dai very much embraced Para-Olympic founder Dr Ludwig Guttman's philosophy of sport being a highly effective form of treatment and rehabilitation. Her commitment to promoting disability sport was a key driver in the Para-Olympics and Olympics being placed on an equal footing in 1988.

The Whang Youn Dai Award is handed out at every Para-Olympics to those;

"Who is fair, honest and is uncompromising in his or her values and prioritizes the promotion of the Paralympic Movement above personal recognition."

2018 is of course the 30th anniversary of the Whang Youn Dai Award. This sequence was a tribute to the award and the remarkable woman who inspired it.

This took the form of a photo slideshow of all the previous winners of the award. It was interspersed with video tributes from three previous winners; David Lega, Sweden, 1996. Collette Bourgonje, Canada, 2010 and Bibian Mantel-Spee, the Netherlands, 2014.

Attention then shifted to the arena where Dr Whang Youn Dai took centre stage in her wheelchair on the protocol stage. The previous winners then came out and handed her a special award honouring how she has been;

"Fair, honest and uncompromising in her values and prioritizes the promotion of the Paralympic Movement above personal recognition."

I understand the sequence then moved on to presenting the 2018 Whang Youn Dai Award(s).

As I've said though the UK broadcaster Channel 4 only showed a recorded and edited version of the Closing Ceremony. Rather proving my jealously theory this is one of the things they edited out.

Although I have no idea how it appeared during the ceremony this year's awards went to;

Adam Hall: This New Zealander was born with Spina Bifada. That though did not prevent him becoming both a Para-Olympic Alpine Skier and working to promote disability sport within New Zealand.

Sini Pyy: Already an accomplished athlete she suffered a spinal injury in a car accident aged 17. However she did not allow that to set her back becoming not just a Para-Olympic Cross Country Skier but also a Para-Olympic Biathlete.

Sini Pyy's most significant achievement though was building the first athlete's council within the National Para-Olympic Committee (NPC) in her native Finland.

On the editing issue I should point out that the full Closing Ceremony is available on both the Paralympic website and YouTube channel. However the broadcast deal it has done with Channel 4 prevents this content being shown in the UK.

Obviously I could get around this by Spoofing my IP address. Essentially changing a tiny bit of computer code to make YouTube of the Paralympic website think I'm somewhere it is able to broadcast that content.

That is though a massive pain. I'm already very behind with the bits of the Closing Ceremony I have seen.

This issue of IP Spoofing though is why when people say things like;

"We've traced the hack/virus back to Russian IP addresses!"

People like me go;


"And?!".

 16:45 on 22/3/18 (UK date).