Olympic flame arrives in South Korea

The Athens Olympic flame arrives at Incheon International Airport of South Korea at 8:05 a.m. Monday for a nationwide relay.

Seoul is the fourth leg of the 34-city worldwide journey of the flame lighted in Athens, Greece, the site of this year's Summer Olympics in August.

The torch so far has traveled to Sydney, Melbourne and Tokyo since it departed from Greece last week.

Seoul, South Korean capital city, hosted the 1988 Summer Olympic Games, which brought development opportunity to the Asian country.

The relay will commence at the 'Peace Gate' at Olympic park, located in southern Seoul around noon, and run 48 kilometers to City Hall in the evening.

Starting with Lee Yun-taek, president of the Korea Olympic Committee, 120 main runners from all walks of life, ranging from sports stars to the physically challenged, along with 19 secondary ones, run with the torch.

Among them are Olympic marathon winner Lee Bong-ju, actor Kwon Sang-woo and singer Lee Hyo-lee.

Moreover, for the first time, a South Korean enterprise, Samsung Electronics Co., became one of the two official sponsors for the torch relay this year. The other sponsor is Coca Cola company.

After spending the night in Seoul, the torch will be taken to Beijing, the host city of the 2008 Summer Olympics, to continue its 78,000-kilometer journey through the world's five continents.

It will go back to Athens on August 13, the date of Olympic opening ceremony.

Olympic flame arrives in Japan from Melbourne

Olympic Games in August. Seoul, capital of South Korea, received the flame on June 7.

Former baseball player Kazushige Nagashima was the first torch bearer on the 53km run in Tokyo, the host of the 1964 Games, with

15-year-old table tennis player Ai Fukuhara running the final leg.

Olympic champions speed-skater Hiroyasu Shimizu and swimmer Kyoko Iwasaki were among 136 participants.

South Korean capital Seoul, which staged the Games in 1988, will receive the flame on Monday.

The flame, lit from the sun's rays in Olympia on March 25, willcover 33 cities in all five continents for the first time.

It will return to Greece on July 9 for a final tour before lighting the cauldron at the Olympic stadium on August 13.