PARIS — Olympic organizers said early Saturday that they “deeply apologize” for introducing South Korea’s delegation of athletes as being from North Korea during Friday night’s Opening Ceremony.
As a boat carrying dozens of rain-soaked, flag-waving South Korean athletes floated down the Seine River, presenters introduced them in French and English as the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” the official name of North Korea. The same name was later correctly used when North Korea’s delegation of athletes sailed past.
Tensions between the North and South Korean governments began almost immediately after the division of Korea following World War II. The two neighboring nations remain in a military standoff decades after the end of the Cold War.
“We deeply apologize for the mistake that occurred when introducing the Korean athletes during the broadcast of the opening ceremony,” the International Olympic Committee .
In a subsequent news conference on Saturday, IOC spokesperson Mark Adams said that “an operational mistake was made” and called the mistake “deeply regrettable.”
“We can only apologize, in an evening of so many moving parts, that this mistake was made,” Adams added.
An error occurred in our broadcast when introducing the team of the National Olympic Committee (NOC) of the Republic of Korea during the Opening Ceremony, we apologise sincerely. pic.twitter.com/LfUPLrtaYv
— IOC MEDIA (@iocmedia) July 27, 2024
The South Korean sports ministry vowed to lodge “a strong complaint with France on a government level” over the embarrassing gaffe. In its statement, the South Korean sports ministry said it has requested a meeting with IOC president Thomas Bach about the incident.
Remarkably, this is not the first time something like this has happened at an Olympics. In 2012, organizers had to apologize when South Korea’s flag appeared beside North Korea’s women’s soccer team on the stadium video board in Glasgow as players warmed up prior to the opening match of group play.
North Korea initially left the pitch in protest and refused to play its match against Colombia that night. The match eventually kicked off more than an hour late.
Source Agencies
