"I wanted to buy dolls like `Jangwon Suhwang Suhang` which is similar to Suhorang & Ban Dabi which is given to the players who won medals.

PyeongChang Winter Olympic official mascots `Suhorang` and `Ban Dabi` are gaining popularity as another main character of the Olympic Games. As an Olympic mascot, it is the first emotional character to be embodied as an emotional character, which means that it is loved by both young and middle-aged people.

The Olympic mascot Suhorang was named as a white tiger "White Tiger" character to the 1988 Seoul Olympics official character "Hodori", meaning "protecting and protecting the Olympic Games" and "lang" in Arirang, Gangwon Province. The paralympic mascot Ban Dabi is made up of Bandar (Banda), which means Banada beetle, a representative animal of Gangwon Province, and a monument, which means to celebrate. The PyeongChang Olympic Organizing Committee made an appeal for the character in 2014, but after winning the prize, it was created by a group of domestic design experts.

Meanwhile, the popularity of Suhorang and Ban Dabi can be seen in the out-of-stock stores offline. In the official store of PyeongChang Olympics, most of the character-related products such as dolls and clothing are out of stock. In the souvenir shop `Super Store` located in Gangneung and Pyeongchang, popular products are already sold out. According to Lotte Department Store, sales of Su Tu and Ban Dabi dolls are 240,000 pieces from May to the opening date of February 9th. Pyeongchang Olympic badge sales, including character badges, are more than 165,000.

Due to the popularity of characters, the wait line is increasing every day in front of the super store. The entrance to Gangneung supermarket should wait at least 15 minutes and it should be 30 minutes or more to calculate. Han Ji-ju (24) from Daegu said, "I am sorry I cannot buy a men`s quarrel," he said. "I bought 170,000 won including badges and sneakers." Actual visitors buy 100,000 to 400,000 won at a time, said a supermarket official.

According to the PyeongChang Organizing Committee, the average number of visitors before the New Year holiday is 10,000 in Gangneung supermarket and 15,000 in Pyeongchang. In the New Year holidays, 19,000 people in Gangneung and 27,000 people in Pyeongchang, which nearly doubled, visited the park. The PyeongChang Superstore exceeded KRW 1 billion in sales on February 17.

The Olympic license is said to account for about 10 % of the Olympic total revenue. The Olympic Games, which have earned the most sales as licensed products so far, are the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which cost $ 163 million. The 1988 Seoul Olympic license product sales, which preceded Hodori, amounted to 18.8 million dollars. The PyeongChang Organizing Committee said that it had set a sales target of KRW 150 billion on licensed products on February 5.

The popularity factor of Suhorang and Ban Dabi is analyzed as `friendliness`. Until now, the Olympic characters have expressed the `motions` of sporting events, and Suhang and Ban Dabi are the first Olympics to have `emotions`. The heart that is full of affection is a figure of a tiger and a half dwarf. The four animations produced by the PyeongChang Organizing Committee are also added to the familiarity. An official from the PyeongChang Organizing Committee said, "As the Olympic Games have been held successfully, the characters are becoming more and more popular." The first "emotional type" character was designed and distributed to KakaoTalk emoticons.”

Kang Lee-kyung (23), a volunteer at the PyeongChang Olympic Games, said, "I am working at the information center, and it seems like foreigners are cute enough to ask me about the tiger cats."


Gangneung = By Jin Hyun Jin 2jinhj@


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