GANGNEUNG, South Korea — The clink of skates on ice, the multilingual cheers of fans, the rousing national anthems — every Olympic Games has its familiar sonic pleasures.

Except this one.

The official sound of the 2018 Winter Olympics is quickly becoming the screech of emergency alerts on people’s cellphones.

Such notifications from local and regional governments are common throughout South Korea. They bear warnings about air pollution, extreme weather, earthquakes, fires and other possible danger. They are very helpful — if you know Korean, because the messages are written in it.

But for most of the thousands of international athletes, journalists and spectators visiting for the Games, the alerts are a mystifying source of panic, confusion or plain annoyance.