The South Korean sports ministry said Saturday it is seeking a meeting with International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach over a gaffe during the opening ceremony for the Paris Olympics in which South Korea was incorrectly introduced as North Korea during the parade of athletes.
They introduced them as "Democratic People's Republic of Korea", which is the official name for North Korea. South Korea's official name is just "Republic of Korea". I can totally see many people who are used to calling them "North" or "South Korea" mixing those up.
This almost as bad as that international competition where when the Kazakh person won gold in their event, the organizers played the national anthem from Borat instead of the real national anthem of Kazakhstan…
This didn’t even make the US broadcast. NBC skipped a lot of countries from the Parade of Nations. As a country of immigrants, you’d think they’d show them all.
Yeah, that's why I find BBC streams wherever possible. The American broadcast anchors talk too damn much, and always show more fluff garbage than the actual events.
Although in this case, even the BBC announcers were pretty awful. I started with the CBC via my VPN and switched to the UK after the white CBC lady started doing "Caribbean" accents when those countries floated by. It was better, but still pretty bad. I wish there would be a way to just watch it without anyone announcing anything. Just give me subtitles for the French public announcements at the ceremony.
Imagine if they introduced them as "South Korea" and "better Korea"!
(Because this is the internet I have to explicitly state that it's a joke and of course N. Korea is a not better. I mean, S. Korea has plenty of problems too but still....)
I thought they added the word "democratic" but the announcer was speaking over it so I wasn't sure. I did say at the time, "did they just call 'South Korea' 'North Korea?'
But the whole ceremony was such a bizarre fever dream that by the time they got to robohorse, I had totally forgotten that.