PYEONGCHANG, South Korea (AP) — From volunteers to support staff to the joint Korea women's hockey team, people from many cultures bid farewell to each other and to the 2018 Winter Olympics on Monday as a swath of the eastern Korean Peninsula readied itself for something novel: relative normalcy.
Seven years after a successful Olympic bid that changed its people and its landscape forever, Pyeongchang exhaled.
"Farewell! Bye bye! Gamsahamnida!" volunteers using the Korean word for "thank you" shouted to departing buses in Gangneung, the coastal city near Pyeongchang where many events were held.
Workers yanked down paper signs by the hundreds and busloads of Olympians, journalists and support workers rolled toward train stations and highways Monday in the aftermath of a Winter Games that was as political as it was athletic.