Actor Ryu Jun Yeol took a turn, as did Kim Jin Woon and Lee Seung Hoon, singers with K-pop band Winner. Hit comedy actor Cha Seung Won is due to carry the Torch when it reaches Seoul.

And sharing the duties in the capital will be five members of the esports team KT Rolster.

Question for the sporting world - are they carrying the torch for esports’ future place in the Olympics?

Most runners in the Relay have been from South Korea but Poland's former Ultimate Fighting Championship straw-weight mixed martial arts (MMA) champion Joanna Jędrzejczyk was also chosen to carry the Torch

"MMA is a long way from being included in Olympic competition so it is a big thing for me to represent our country in such a big international arena," she said. 

At this point, it seems that esports are a lot nearer to being included in the Olympics than MMA.

Indeed, they are already tangentially involved in the upcoming Games, as the International Olympic Committee announced last November.

The IOC has numerous technology partners, including Samsung, Panasonic and Alibaba, the Asian giants who signed up to the TOP programme in January 2017.

Membership of the TOP Programme costs approximately $200 million (£156 million/€179 million) for a four-year cycle.

On June 21, the IOC announced that Intel had become the latest technological wizards to have signed up for their Worldwide TOP Partnership.

And it will be Intel who will be delivering what the IOC describe as "two distinct gaming experiences to Korea in the lead-up to PyeongChang 2018: the Intel® Extreme Masters PyeongChang e-sports tournament, featuring one of the most celebrated esports titles of all time, Blizzard Entertainment’s StarCraft® II  and a separate exhibition featuring Ubisoft’s action-sports title Steep™ Road to the Olympics, the official licensed game of the Olympic Winter Games Pyeongchang 2018.

Timo Lumme, managing director of IOC Television and Marketing Services, announced: "We are proud to have our Worldwide TOP Partner Intel bring this competition to Pyeongchang in the lead-up to the Olympic Winter Games 2018. Following on from the Olympic Summit last week, the IOC will now explore e-sports’ relationship with the Olympic Movement further.

"This is just the start of an exciting future and we’re interested to see how this experience will play out."

While the elite youth, via a qualifying event in Beijing last month, will now be focusing their minds and flexing their fingers in readiness for the big event, the game will also be set up throughout the Olympic Village for attendees and athletes to try out.

According to the IOC statement Intel would be working with the IOC "to reimagine the future of the Olympic Games with new levels of fan interaction through leading-edge technology".

But that is clearly not all Intel is working on with the IOC.

"Esports is a growing cultural phenomenon expected to reach about 500 million fans worldwide by 2020,” said Gregory Bryant, senior vice-president and general manager of the client computing group at Intel Corporation.

"Leading up to Pyeongchang 2018, Intel’s goal is to share the thrilling esports experience with sports fans around the world.

"Intel has pushed the boundaries of esports for more than 15 years, and we’re committed to growing esports at every global sporting stage, including this groundbreaking tournament in Pyeongchang."

Esports has everything the IOC craves. Huge commercial potential. Huge engagement with young people. A hugely expanding growth.

It’s just the "sport" bit that remains in question.

The broad IOC position was made clear shortly before that announcement regarding Intel.

Following the IOC Summit in Lausanne in October it was announced that a meeting of leading stakeholders from the Olympic Movement had concluded that competitive esports "could be considered as a sporting activity".

This was because the "players involved play with an intensity which may be comparable to athletes in traditional sports".

The IOC and the Global Association of International Sports Federations said they would be entering into a "dialogue" with the gaming industry and players to explore the area further and would report to Olympic Movement stakeholders "in due course".

In order to be for esports to be fully recognised by the IOC, however, there had to be a guarantee that they did not "infringe on the Olympic values".

They were also required to set up a governing body "guaranteeing compliance with the rules and regulations of the Olympic Movement", including on areas such as anti-doping and match fixing.

The link between esports and an established international multi-sport event has already been clearly forged in Asia, where esports will be part of the medal events at the 2022 Asian Games in the Chinese city of Hangzhou.

In announcing that decision last April, the Olympic Council of Asia said it was an echo of "the rapid development and popularity of this new form of sports".

As part of the broad strategy to make that possible, three days of esports competition featured as a demonstration sport at the 2017 Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games in Ashgabat.

The project manager of that demonstration event, Jingyua Ye, told insidethegames that he was confident that every country on the continent would have a fully-established National Federation for the sport by the time it featured at Hangzhou 2022.

"We’re helping each country to either establish or develop their esports federation because in some countries esports are not well developed," said Jingyua Ye, a representative of Alisports, a division of Alibaba.

"They need time and they need investment to have their own development or environments.

"So it might not be like 100 per cent ready for every country in Asia next year, but I believe in 2022 it should be."

Kenneth Fok, President of the Asian Electronic Sports Federation, the governing body for esports in that continent, pointed out last October that many nations had no esport associations.

"We need national teams, and we need NOCs (National Olympic Committees) to recognise the national esports associations if we want to enter the Olympic family," Fok said.

Asked whether he thinks esports can one day feature on the Olympic programme, Ye seemed confident.

"That’s the reason why we, let’s say, reactivated the Asian Electronic Sports Federation; to give better support for esports events in Jakarta next year and in 2022 in the Hangzhou Asian Games," he said.

"We see entering the Asian Games as the first step for e-sports entering the Olympic Games.

"We’ll look to establish more rules, more formats to make esports more suitable, more prepared to enter the Olympic Games."

OCA President Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah has gone on record warning that the growth in popularity of esports could be ignored and needed to be accommodated to help keep the world's youth engaged.

Asked about the likelihood of esports featuring at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris in some capacity, the 54-year-old insisted the immediate priority is for the International eSports Federation to achieve IOC recognition.

Ashgabat 2017 esports competitions were held in Defence of the Ancients 2, a multiplayer online battle arena video game, strategy card game Hearthstone, StarCraft II - a real-time strategy game - and The King of Fighters XIV.

The worldwide trend towards esports inclusion in sporting events was underlined last year when it was announced that the sports included on the programme for future

Brazilian University Games – the largest university competition in Latin America in which the 26 states of Brazil and the Federal District take part - would include esports.

And what of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics?

The final programme of sports for the next summer Olympics – 33 will be featured - was confirmed by the IOC Executive Board last June. The IOC President Thomas Bach said that the goal for Tokyo 2020 had been for the Games to be "more youthful, more urban and include more women".

Setting aside the questions over its claim to be a sport, esports certainly ticks those boxes. So will it be involved in some form during Tokyo 2020?

In a recent article, tokyoweekender took a look at the prospects – although it pointed out that Japan is currently one of the lowest placing countries in Asia in terms of esports earnings, with South Korea massively in the lead.

"With the growing global awareness of e-sports increasing from 809 million in 2015 to a predicted 1.572 billion in 2019, the presence of e-sports at the 2017 Tokyo Game Show is yet another step for the competitive video gaming phenomenon," the website wrote. 

"The Tokyo Game Show, which took place at the Makuhari Messe convention centre in Chiba in September with around 250,000 visitors, is the biggest video game expo held in the country annually.

"This year, 609 companies took the opportunity to show off their products and ideas to the crowds. Sponsors Sony and Samsung decided to introduce the element of e-sports to increase the show’s appeal."

The numbers, both in terms of competitors, and profits, add up. What remains, however, is the profound question of whether esports are a sport. Or even whether they are an anti-sport.

As Dan Etchells pointed out in his insidethegames blog on the subject, the language describing the esports that took place during Ashgabat 2017 was broadly suggestive of athleticism, as the organisers described its exponents as having "honed their strategising, decision-making and hand-eye coordination to such an elite form as to be considered athletes on par with the more 'traditional' sporting heroes".

But it involves sitting for hours at a time watching a screen and manipulating activity via a limited movement of the fingers.

As my colleague also pointed out, recent articles have highlighted potential health risks to regular esports players.

"Among them is carpal tunnel syndrome - a medical condition due to compression of the median nerve as it travels through the wrist at the carpal tunnel - and wrist injuries due to repetitive motion.

"Mental fatigue and early burnout and poor nutrition and lack of exercise are also identified, while one of the more extreme risks listed is that of incurring a collapsed lung due to poor posture and an inactive lifestyle."

So esports is an activity that requires ongoing assessment not only to establish whether it constitutes a sport, but whether it might be actively harmful to the millions of its largely younger participants.

How can the IOC be entertaining the links that have already been made?

Perhaps the IOC President is the best person to be consulting on this question. Certainly he is the most influential person.

Bach certainly sounded a warning note in an interview with the South China Morning Post in August last year when asked about the prospect of Paris 2024 including esports.

 "We want to promote non-discrimination, non-violence, and peace among people," he said. "This doesn’t match with video games, which are about violence, explosions and killing. And there we have to draw a clear line."

But Bach’s line was not entirely clear, as he added: "If ever somebody is competing at playing football virtually or playing other sports virtually, this is of high interest."

Bach also commented: "You have to have somebody who is guaranteeing you that these athletes doing video sports games are not doped, that they are following technical rules, that they are respecting each other."

Another factor that has been floated in Olympic circles with regard to esports – how likely is it that they will encourage protagonists to go out and practise more obviously active sport themselves? Fine with football. Less good with online battles.

How such a factor could be determined or measured is a mystery, but anecdotal evidence suggests that devoted games players have little time to spare kicking a ball around…

So will esports, super-sedentary, possibly injurious, be acceptable to the IOC in future so long as the games in which its participants are involved are well-administered and not overtly hostile?

On the topic of whether esports can be considered as a bone fide sport, Fok, the Asian esports supremo, said he would not hide behind what he described as the "white elephant".

"Of course, there is a debate on whether esports is good," he added. "I mean this is the thing we have to address face on."

Last August, Tony Estanguet, Co-President of the Paris 2024 Olympic Bid Committee, announced that the 2024 Games would consider including esports as a medal event, saying: "There is some time to look at it, to interact, to engage. The IOC will have the last say, if they want esports on the programme."

Estanguet is young - if not as young as most esports participants - and very smart. Smart enough to be reading the ambivalent signs about esports floating around within the Olympic Movement, and smart enough not to be closing down an element that might, conceivably, add massive weight to the Paris 2024 maxim "Made For Sharing".

If ever an activity, with its millions of online viewers, was made for sharing, esports is. But the question remains - should it be shared within the context of a genuine sports competition?

Estanguet, now President of Paris 2024. presided last November at an event at INSEP, the French elite sports academy on the outskirts of Paris, and was asked there to assess the prospects for esports making the 2024 cut.

"I want the best programme ever for Paris 2024 and there is this is a great opportunity for us to add new sports into the programme," he said. "We know we have until the end of 2020 to propose such sports to the IOC and we will take the time to look at the benefits of the different scenarios.

"Esports is probably one of them. Because there is today success on this sport. It is something to us worth looking at. But we don’t know.

"Today it is too early. I am interested in knowing more about what is behind e-sports. But there are also other sports, really motivated and passionate.

"I have already received many requests from them to be part of the programme. So we will meet them.

"I want to have a clear process with my sport director to meet them to define the best criteria of which sports to choose. I can’t tell you today what will be the direction. It’s too early and we have more than two years now to look at this programme. We will use this time."

A smart but non-commital response that was nevertheless very far from the assent being shown in other Olympic quarters.

No doubt Fok’s phrase about the "white elephant" referred more to an elephant in the room. But however esports’ Olympic future turns out, no one will want to see the question of its suitability being ignored and neglected….