07/27/24 07:56:00
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07/27 07:54 CDT Olympic organizers apologize for introducing South Korean
athletes as North Korea
Olympic organizers apologize for introducing South Korean athletes as North
Korea
By KATE BRUMBACK
Associated Press
PARIS (AP) --- Olympic Games organizers said they "deeply apologize" for
introducing South Korea's athletes as North Korea 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. 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 in Korean.
Jang Mi Ran, the second vice minister of South Korea's Culture, Sports and
Tourism Ministry, requested a meeting with IOC 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.
The statement said South Korea's Olympic committee separately asked the
organizers of the Paris Games to prevent the recurrence of similar incidents.
IOC spokesperson Mark Adams on Saturday 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 in response to a
question from a South Korean journalist during a news conference.
The Korean peninsula has been bitterly divided into South Korea and North Korea
since the end of World War II in 1945.
The blue sign on the boat carrying the South Korean athletes did show the
correct name.
In another opening ceremony glitch, the Olympic flag featuring the five rings
was upside down when it was hoisted toward the end of the ceremony.
"It's regrettable," Adams said. "In a four-hour show occasionally things
happen. We can all move on from that one, it's not the end (of the world)."
After the flag was raised, the broadcast by the IOC's own television operations
did not show any close-up images of it. Typically, flagpoles at Olympic
ceremonies have a mechanism that blows a breeze across the flag to stretch it
out. On Friday, the Olympic rings flag hung limply down next to the pole.
___
Associated Press writers Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul and Graham Dunbar in Paris
contributed to this report.
___
AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games
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