Seoul 1988 Olympic Games
, athletic festival held in
Seoul
that took place September 17?October 2, 1988. The Seoul Games were the 21st occurrence of the modern
Olympic Games
.
After
boycotts
had marred the previous two
Olympiads
, political problems threatened to return to center stage at the 1988 Games. Violent student riots took place in Seoul in the months leading up to the Games.
North Korea
, still technically at war with
South Korea
, complained bitterly that it should have cohost status. The
International Olympic Committee
(IOC) made some
concessions
to North Korea, but North Korea did not find them satisfactory and boycotted; several other countries, notably
Cuba
and
Ethiopia
, stayed away from Seoul in solidarity with North Korea. The
boycott
did not have the effect of previous ones, and the Seoul Games proved to be extremely competitive.
Britannica Quiz
The Olympic Games
U.S.S.R.: 132
East Germany: 102
United States: 94
West Germany: 40
Bulgaria: 35
Note: Medal count per the
IOC website
.
Nearly 8,500
athletes
from 159 countries participated. The Olympic rule requiring participants to be amateurs had been overturned in 1986, and decisions on professional participation were left to the governing bodies of particular
sports
. This resulted in the return of tennis, which had been dropped in 1924, to the Games. Table tennis and team archery events were also added.
Canadian
Ben Johnson
, champion of the 100-meter run, and several weightlifters tested positive for steroid use and were disqualified. In all, 10 athletes were banned from the Games for using
performance-enhancing drugs
. In the track events the Kenyan men’s team won four of the six distance races. Soviet pole-vaulter
Sergey Bubka
won his first gold medal. The women’s competition featured Americans
Florence Griffith Joyner
, winner of three gold medals, and
Jackie Joyner-Kersee
, who earned gold medals in the heptathlon and the
long jump
. Weightlifter
Naim Suleymanoglu
of
Turkey
won the first of his two career gold medals in the featherweight division. Soviet Greco-Roman wrestler
Aleksandr Kareline
, competing in the super heavyweight division, also won his first gold medal.
Kristin Otto
of
East Germany
won six gold medals in swimming.
Janet Evans of the United States
won three swimming events. American
Greg Louganis
, who had swept the men’s diving competition in the
Los Angeles
1984 Summer Olympics, did so again in Seoul.
Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content.
Subscribe Now