YIKES! South Korea Introduced As North Korea During Olympic Opening Ceremony
In an absolute "You have to be kidding me" moment, the Olympic Opening Ceremony introduced South Korea as North Korea yesterday in what could be one of the worst name blunders of all time.
Think about it.
The Olympics are supposed to be the premiere entity bringing together countries and their people from across the globe. Literally. We expect the United Nations to screw things up as they routinely do, but not the Olympics - not when you have FOUR YEARS to prepare for it. I don't even think mixing up Iraq and Iran would be as offensive as this!
SOUTH KOREA NOT HAPPY WITH BEING INTRODUCED AS NORTH KOREA
As the boat carrying the South Korean Olympic team was being introduced, the announcer in charge of naming each country confidently shouted, "Democratic People's Republic of Korea!" which is the proper name for North Korea in French and English. If that wasn't enough, the announcer repeated the name again when introducing North Korea, just to make sure everyone knew what she meant.
Now, if that was me, I would probably have thought about switching from the North Korea introduction and call them South Korea when it was their turn - ya know, to make up for it.
Actually, who am I kidding? I ain't messing with North Korea whatsoever. Which is precisely the point. Just think how the South feels after being called their mortal enemy, dictatorship-run neighbors to the north.
Fortunately, the boat carrying South Korea's 143 athletes was labeled correctly.
AN OLYMPIC-SIZE MISTAKE!
This morning, Olympic organizers apologized to the South Koreans.
"Deeply regrettable and we apologize wholeheartedly and have made it very clear by the IOC that an operational mistake was made. We can only apologize that on an evening of many moving parts that the mistake was made. And we apologize to the people of the Republic of Korea for that error," an Olympic spokesperson said. IOC President Thomas Back is also expected to speak with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to apologize as well later today.
Meanwhile, the North Koreans returned to the Olympic Games for the first time since Rio in 2016 after refusing to mandate their athletes get vaccinated for Covid during the 2020 Games that were played in 2021 in Tokyo.