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| Olympic Drama, Queen Yu-na |
She initially felt unwell as her flight back from the vote in Durban got closer to Korea, beginning with a slight twitch in the nasal area, at approximately 1.12pm Korean time. Six minutes later she coughed twice within the space of thirty seconds, and then yawned shortly after at 1.20pm. By 1.24pm, her condition deteriorated significantly, requiring a trip to the bathroom which lasted seven minutes eighteen seconds. Back in her seat, slipping in and out of consciousness, cabin crew feared the young globally-famous Korean sensation had given too much of her life-energy in her heroic battle to win the Olympics for Korea. She then complained of feeling unwell at a brief stopover in Bangkok.
Fortunately, despite the drama Queen Yu-na was able to walk unaided off the plane when it landed at Incheon Airport, which recently won the title of World's Best Airport for the sixth year in a row. Doctors expect her to make a full recovery within a couple of days - just in time to continue shooting her emotional reality TV show “Kiss and Cry” - and they say she will suffer no damage to her shoulders despite the incredibly heavy burden she carried.
Earlier in Durban, amidst scenes of tension and high drama Queen Yu-na reportedly played a critical role in South Korea's successful bid, winning over International Olympics Committee members single-handedly with her appealing voice and correct pronunciation in a 170-second presentation. A professor at the Biological Signal Analysis Center of Chungbuk Provincial College, analyzed Kim's voice in the presentation, which is said to have been as perfect as her skating ability. According to scientific voice analyzer results, her pitch, or vibration of vocal cords per second, was 238 hertz in the first part, growing to 257 hertz in the latter part.
"As Kim naturally reflected changes in her emotions in her voice, her pitch changed." said the professor. Scientists have been amazed by the result, and are already speculating that others may try to copy this new 'emotion-pitch change' style of speaking, but they cautioned that it could be dangerous – even for native-English speakers - without proper training.
The fashion icon's share of unvoiced sounds was also a perfect 32 percent, and she showed high scores in two measurements that reflect accuracy in pronunciation: "The Jitter" - a variation of vocal cords, and "The Shimmer" - an amplitude of variation. The former was 2.1 percent and the latter 1 decibel, both significantly better scores than mundane people.
Kim Yu-na was one of two athletes to present the overwhelming case for Pyeongchang's bid in Durban. The other was said to have been a retired member of Korea's Taekwondo team whose name is not known. President Lee Myung-bak also appeared before the Committee to make Pyeongchang's case, but this was not enough to stop members voting in favor of the Korean city after Yu-na's mesmerizing oral performance.
Other members of the Korean delegation were said to be privately sickened at how close Korea could have come to disaster if Ice Queen Yu-na had fallen ill just a day earlier. A senior member of the bid team seemed to sum up the mood "I worked on the bid for seven years, then Kim Yu-na came to Durban and it seems she accomplished more in 170 seconds than I've done since I started working on this project full-time in 2004."
It is not certain if Kim Yu-na will participate in the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics due to her advanced age in 2018. If she does not, the military have asked her to stand on the border for two weeks during the Games to prevent a North Korean invasion.
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