Don C. Brunell: South Korea Success Goes Beyond Olympics

It was hard to get excited about the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, but give the South Koreans credit for overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles to pull the games off—and pull them off exceptionally well.

The odds were stacked against them. Few people know where Pyeongchang is and the Korean mountains lack the ambiance of Europe’s Alps and North America’s Rockies. The northern coastal range is known for its frigid Siberian winds and subzero temperatures. Both arrived in the first week of competition and disrupted skiing and snowboarding.

A month ago, the world’s attention was on the growi...