Olympic organizers apologize for introducing South Korean athletes as North Korean
PARIS — Olympic Games organizers said they “deeply apologize” for introducing South Korea’s athletes as North Korea’s during the opening ceremony in Paris.
As the South Korean athletes waved their nation’s flag on a boat floating down the Seine River on Friday evening, they were announced in both French and English as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the formal name of North Korea. South Korea is the Republic of Korea.
“We deeply apologize for the mistake that occurred when introducing the Korean team during the opening ceremony broadcast,” the International Olympic Committee said in a post on X.
The Korean peninsula has been bitterly divided into North and South since the end of World War II in 1945.
Jang Mi-ran, the second vice minister of South Korea’s Culture, Sports and Tourism Ministry, requested a meeting with International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach over the incident, the ministry said in a statement Saturday.
It said the ministry also asked South Korea’s Foreign Ministry to file “a strong government-level complaint” with the French government.
Bach called South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol on Saturday and apologized over the incident, Yoon’s office said in a statement.
Pouring rain can’t derail a bold a Paris Olympic opening ceremony that featured athletes on the Seine and performances from Lady Gaga and Celine Dion.
Yoon told Bach that the South Korean people were “very shocked and embarrassed” over the incident and asked him to offer an apology via social media and other media and prevent the recurrence of similar mistakes.
International Olympic Committee spokesperson Mark Adams called the error “clearly deeply regrettable.”
“An operational mistake was made. We can only apologize, in an evening of so many moving parts, that this mistake was made,” Adams said at a news conference.
The mix-up echoed another during the 2012 Olympics in London, where organizers posted the South Korean flag on a jumbo screen as a North Korean player was introduced before a women’s soccer match, leading the North Koreans to refuse to take the field for nearly an hour.
Brumback writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul and Graham Dunbar in Paris contributed to this report.
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