The head of the International Olympic Committee panel overseeing South Korea’s preparations for the 2018 Winter Olympics has dismissed fears the country’s political turmoil could harm the Games.

Last week, a South Korean court upheld a parliamentary vote in December to impeach President Park Geun-hye for alleged corruption – a repeat of the situation the IOC faced before last year’s Rio Olympics, when President Dilma Rousseff was dumped from office.

But Gunilla Lindberg, the chair of the IOC’s coordination commission, said yesterday that she and IOC president Thomas Bach met South Korea’s acting President, Hwang Kyo-ahn, and other leading politicians this week and were assured there is universal support for next February’s Games.

Lindberg said: “Independent of what’s happening on the political side in Korea just now, it is total support for the Olympic Games in 2018, from all sides. So we are not worried about that, we trust the politicians here.”

Sitting alongside Lindberg was Hee-beom Lee, the president of Pyeongchang 2018’s organising committee, and he addressed another of the issues causing concern ahead of the Games, namely the deterioration of relations with China after South Korea installed an American missile-defence system.

Lee said Pyeongchang was continuing to work closely with the next two hosts of the Olympics, Tokyo in 2020 and Beijing in 2022, and did not believe the Games would be “affected by any external factors”.

This was the eighth visit to Pyeongchang by Lindberg’s coordination commission, with one more scheduled for August.