DANCERS twirled and fireworks roared, torches from some 40 diverse lands converged and rival South and North Korean teams marched together as Asia kicked off its biggest festival of sport yesterday.

　　South Korean President Kim Dae-jung declared the 14th Asian Games open at 6 p.m. (Beijing Time) in front of a roaring crowd of 60,000 in a gleaming new stadium in his country’s second city of Busan.

　　China scored two gold medals on the first day of the two-week Games, with Wang Haibin winning the men’s individual foil and Zhao Gang the men’s individual epee.

　　Under the slogan “New Vision, New Asia”, the Games will feature 9,900 athletes from 44 countries and regions competing for 419 gold medals in 38 sports.

　　Sports include most of the Olympic events from archery to swimming to yachting. But spectators will also be treated to ancient weird and wonderful sports not widely known outside Asia, such as kabbadi and the martial art of wushu.

　　The Olympic Council of Asia covers a region of 3.8 billion people, from Lebanon in the west to Japan in the east, and from Kazakhstan in the north to the world’s newest country, East Timor, in the south.

　　For the first time in the games' 51-year history, it finally saw a complete gathering of its 44 members.

　　The newly independent East Timor added more color to the largest-ever Asiad to make it a complete one after the Olympic Council of Asia allowed it a temporary membership earlier in September.

　　Afghanistan, a nation ravaged by wars for the past two decades, returned to the sports family after struggling to an unstable peace.

　　Spurred on by the Olympic spirit of reconciliation, North and South Koreans marched into the stadium in a mixed group under the Unification Flag after half a century of enmity and division.

　　China targets 120 golds

　　China, out to retain first place in the overall medal tally at the Games. They need only 100 to accomplish this mission but they are targeting at least 120 gold medals.

　　"It is no problem for us to reach 100 golds, but that is only part of what we want,'' He Huixian, the head of the Chinese delegation said Friday.

　　"We will host the Olympic Games six years down the road and we'd like to consider this games as a way to improve our up-and-coming young athletes,'' He said.

　　China, leading the Asiad since the 1982 New Dehli Games, wants more than just another gold medal haul from the Asiad. It wants to train its Olympic hopefuls so that they will shine in the 2004 Athens Olympics and, more importantly, in the 2008 Olympics on home soil.

　　China has dispatched an unprecedented large Asiad delegation with 948 members, the third largest entry for the 16-day tournament, following the team of host ROK, with 1,007 members, and Japan, with 985.

　　China's leading position aside, rivalry will continue between the ROK and Japan who have been battling for second spot since 1982. In the past five Asiads, Japan won twice, in 1982 and in 1994, on home soil in Hiroshima.