GANGNEUNG, South Korea — Early Friday morning, in a hallway outside the Olympic media dining room, a young woman stocked a long row of shelves with Korean novels translated into a dozen or so languages. The books were free to take or borrow, she said. The Pyeongchang Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games hoped to introduce international visitors to Korean literature and other aspects of the national culture.

I grabbed “The Hole” by Hye-Young Pyun, described on its jacket as “a deeply unnerving novel about the horrors of isolation.” I’ve spent the last 24 hours here in the cold, waiting for the rest of the world to arrive. It seemed fitting.

With one week to go before the opening ceremony, organizers were putting the finishing touches on the event sites for the 2018 Winter Games. On Friday, the facilities were just beginning to come to life. Local volunteers and staff members — wearing red and gray jumpsuits and moving tentatively in packs — outnumbered the athletes and media members.