Chief organizer of Pyeongchang Winter Olympics offers to resign

The chief organizer of South Korea's first Winter Olympics has offered to resign, a government official said Monday.

The official said Kim Jin-sun, head of the organizing committee for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, recently expressed his intention to quit and that his resignation offer has been accepted, without offering specific time frames.

Kim, 67, has been the top organizer of the Winter Games since November 2011, four months after Pyeongchang, an alpine town in the eastern province of Gangwon, beat out Germany's Munich for the right to host the 2018 Olympics.

Kim was serving in his second term as the head of the organizing committee, which was to end in October 2015.

Kim was the head of Pyeongchang's bidding committee on two failed attempts, first in 2003 and then in 2007. He was the governor of Gangwon Province on those occasions.

After leaving the provincial office, Kim served as a special ambassador for Pyeongchang's third and successful bid in 2011.

Rumors that Kim would leave the post first surfaced last week, when he didn't attend a groundbreaking ceremony for new venues for ice sports for the 2018 Olympics in Gangneung, a city near Pyeongchang, last Thursday. (Yonhap)