Incheon Asiad Main Stadium receives positive feedback

Foreign press members who are covering the 2014 Incheon Asian Games have evaluated this Games as scoring four out of five. The comment that the good impression from this Asiad makes them want to cover the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics is 4.46 points.

Looking at a few domestic press articles, the Incheon Asian Games are on a level of Incheon community sports day. Yet foreign press is much more forgiving than Korean. What has made this contrast? We conducted an anonymous survey and interviews of 25 members of the foreign press whom we met at the Main Press Center, and heard their opinions on Asia`s largest multi-sports event.

Upon asking a total of seven categories, the highest-ranked were the competition venues. One Japanese journalist said that despite having visited multiple comprehensive events for a decade, none were as of high quality as the Incheon Asiad Main Stadium. On a question that asked them to cite the best quality venue in short answer format, the Main Stadium got 15 votes, the most. The lowest ranked was the Yeonhui Cricket Ground with seven votes. A Bangladeshi journalist commented that the venue appeared to have been built with lack of understanding on the sport of cricket.

The civic awareness demonstrated by Incheon public also garnered praise. The foreign press was impressed by the way Incheon citizens took pains to be as friendly as possible. One Indonesian journalist said before the event, the journalist stayed only in the airport in case of flight transfers, but during the sporting event, when the journalist was panicking about catching a taxi late at night, an Incheon citizen helped the journalist return easily to the media village. The journalist also expressed a wish to stay one night when transferring flights in Incheon International Airport.

On the other hand, evaluations on transportation and food remained on the two-score level. The main complaint was that the shuttle bus runs irregularly while schedule changes are not notified adequately. One Chinese journalist said when Chinese people go traveling abroad, they ate so much instant cup noodles that leave an odor, prompting Xi Jinping to discourage Chinese travelers from eating the noodles. Yet this time, it was hard to find a food other than the instant cup noodles. The Chinese press member said this Asiad was a time for the most cup noodles ever.

There were also a sizable volume of complaints about communications with the operating officials of the Asiad. A Jordanian reporter said this is clearly an international event yet there are too few people who can speak English. There were also erroneous English expressions within the Asian Games arenas, which prompted laughs, according to the press member.