The 1988 Summer Olympics (Korean: 1988년 하계 올림픽; RR: 1988-nyeon Hagye Ollimpik), officially the Games of the XXIV Olympiad (제24회 올림픽경기대회; Je-24-hoe Ollimpik-Gyeonggidaehoe) and officially branded as Seoul 1988 (서울 1988), were an international multi-sport event held from 17 September to 2 October 1988 in Seoul, South Korea.

[7] Nonetheless, the much larger boycotts seen in the three previous editions were avoided, resulting in the largest number of participating nations during the Cold War era.

[8] Only thirty-five years after the Korean War which devastated the nation, and during a decade of social unrest in South Korea, the Olympics was successfully held and became the culmination of what was deemed the "Miracle on the Han River".

[9][10] Seoul was chosen to host the Summer Games through a vote held on 30 September 1981, finishing ahead of Nagoya, Japan.

[11] Seoul had previously hosted many international events, but the most noteworthy ones were the Miss Universe 1980 and the 1986 Asian Games, thus demonstrating that it had the appropriate capability.

The opening ceremony featured a skydiving team descending over the stadium and forming the five-colored Olympic Rings,[44] as well as a mass demonstration of taekwondo.

With the successful staging of Miss Universe 1980 and the 1986 Asian Games, Chun Doo-hwan, Park's successor, submitted Korea's bid to the IOC in September 1981, in hopes that the increased international exposure brought by the Olympics would legitimize his authoritarian regime amidst increasing political pressure for democratization and less rigidity in state policies.

Further, he hoped it would provide protection from increasing threats from North Korea, and showcase the economic strength that the country was experiencing to the world.

The Olympics gave a powerful impetus to the development of South Korea's relations with Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and with China.

[49] In utilizing media events theory, Larson and Park investigated the Seoul Olympics as a form of political communication.

An Associated Press article states that homeless people and alcoholics, "but mostly children and the disabled" were arrested and sent to these camps to prepare for the Olympics.

In addition, a prosecutor had his investigation into the Brothers Home camp limited at a number of levels of government "in part out of fear of an embarrassing international incident on the eve of the Olympics.

[51] By accident while on a hunting trip, prosecutor Kim Yong-won heard about and visited a work detail of prisoners in ragged clothes overseen by guards with wooden bats and dogs.

In his words, he knew immediately that "a very serious crime" was occurring, and in January 1987, he led a raid on the facility and found beaten and malnourished inmates.

As a result, on 8 and 9 January 1986 in Lausanne, Switzerland, the IOC President chaired a meeting of the North and South Korean Olympic Committees.

Badminton and bowling were held as exhibition sports, which did not require IOC approval and were not part of the official Olympic schedule.

This advance also enabled the development of a sports calendar in which the main events were scheduled to be broadcast in major Western markets in television prime time.

Aruba, American Samoa, Brunei, Cook Islands, Maldives, Vanuatu, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and South Yemen made their first Olympic appearance at these Games.

[60] In the United States, NBC became the telecast provider hereafter for the Summer Games, after a five-Olympics run by the American Broadcasting Company from 1968 to 1984.

In 2003, Wade Exum, the United States Olympic Committee's director of drug control administration from 1991 to 2000, released documents that showed Carl Lewis had tested positive three times at the 1988 United States Olympic trials for minimum amounts of pseudoephedrine, ephedrine, and phenylpropanolamine, which were banned stimulants.

[64] Fellow Santa Monica Track Club teammates Joe DeLoach and Floyd Heard were also found to have the same banned stimulants in their systems, and were cleared to compete for the same reason.

[64][67] According to the IOC rules at the time, positive tests with levels lower than 10 ppm were cause of further investigation but not immediate ban.

"[64] Following Exum's revelations the IAAF acknowledged that at the 1988 Olympic Trials the USOC indeed followed the correct procedures in dealing with eight positive findings for ephedrine and ephedrine-related compounds in low concentration.