The 21th 2010 Winter Olympics will take place in Vancouver and Whistler from February 12 to 28 in 2010. This is the third Olympic Games hosted by Canada. It has been anticipated that over 80 countries will participate in the Olympics, but for now 54 countries have been confirmed. It seems that with many first-time participants, such as Ghana, the Bahamas, Cayman Islands, Gabon, Malta, Tonga, the Olympics will be getting hot. Korea participated in 22 sports in the Torino Olympics such as speed skating, ski jumping, biathlon, luge, skating, cross country, skeleton etc. And Korea is also taking part in 20 sports in the 2010 Olympics, but only short track seems to be likely to do its job well.

In the previous Winter Olympic Games, our country stood at the 9th place with 6 gold, 3 silver and 2 bronze medals. But they were obtained mainly from short track games. Even though Italy was at the 10th place, they obtained 5 gold and 6 bronze medals by participating in various sports such as luge, bobsleigh, short track, cross-country and other events. What we have to see is that other countries got medals from various sports with satisfactory scores, while Korea mainly focused on short track events. It's true that most of our sports except short track  are in low level and people also show less interest in them. So, how can we change this tendency? First, we need to establish sports industry department and its organization. If we extend and reorganize the system of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, it is possible to set up an efficient and logical policy that leads to an effective contribute. It is necessary to normalize the function of sports department to propel sports policy. Furthermore, strengthening the capacity in marketing is important, too. The main element of developing sports is made by professionally trained human power. Therefore, for the construction of human power for the continuous development of sports, we will have to intensify the capacity in marketing through the rational administration of sports facilities. Apart from that, we must not remiss the enlargement of market and investment, too. The support and interest from the government and industry are essential, but we can't ignore the support of people, too.

There are some sports in Olympics which we always believe we should get the gold medal: short track, Taekwondo and western archery. And there are also some sports in which we must have an interest: such popular sports as soccer and the baseball. These sports seem to have started from the wrong recognition of sports of our government and enterprises and the people. We have to change such sports recognition which caused today's sports system. We have to develop Korean sports with open mind.

One of the most representative or best examples is 'Yu-Na Kim, the queen of figure skating.' If it is not for Yu-Na Kim, the future of Korean figure skating may seem to be dark. Thanks to Yu-Na Kim, our country has a possibility that we can produce the second Yu-Na Kim in figure skating. In this point, we can say she has made us recognize our bias about sports. Also through the recent successful movie “Take Off (Gukgadaepyo),” we can see the real state of ski jumping in Korea: it is poorly supported and people even don't know its existence. But, it threw away such problems, giving us patriotism and pride with beautiful scenes and good result. These cases show us that there is a hope in Korean sports. But this hope can still be smothered because of indifference of the nation, enterprise and citizen. We have to make an effort to make Korea strong country in the field of sports.

For every sport, interest is the basic virtue. Your attention can be a great support to national athletes. For example, through the recent movie ‘Take off,’ people came to know well about ski jumping and started to support them. And also thanks to Yu-Na Kim, figure skating is loved by many Koreans. These are very inspiring facts. But we should also keep in mind that there are still many sports that need your interest and love. We expect Korean athletes not only to have a good result in the 2018 Pyeong-Chang Winter Olympics but also to contribute to the prosperity of our winter sports.