The IOC apologized to the South Korean contingent after local organizers mistakenly introduced them as North Korea at the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics on Friday (7/26/2024). Official announcements in French and English introduced the South Korean contingent, who were waving flags on their boats as they crossed the Seine River, as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
South Korea is the Republic of Korea. Blue boards on the boats carrying South Korean athletes showed the correct name of the country. South Korean Vice Minister of Sports and Culture Jang Mi-ran, who is in Paris, said that IOC (International Olympic Committee) President Thomas Bach had spoken to South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to apologize in person.
Jang also said that his party would ask the South Korean Foreign Ministry to file a complaint at the government level. The incident received a strong reaction from South Korean netizens who are known to be vocal.
Yoon conveyed the protest to Bach that the South Korean people were “deeply shocked and ashamed” by the incident. He also asked Bach and the IOC to apologize through the media and social media and prevent similar mistakes from happening again.
Bach told Yoon he would take all available steps to prevent a repeat of the embarrassing incident. “This is obviously very regrettable and we sincerely apologize,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams told a news conference on Saturday (7/27/2024). “An operational error has occurred. We can only apologize, on a night full of so much activity, that this error occurred.”
A similar error occurred at the 2012 Olympics in London when organizers placed a South Korean flag on a giant screen during a North Korean player’s introduction before a women’s soccer match. This prompted North Korea to refuse to enter the field for almost an hour.
The Korean Peninsula has been divided into South and North Korea since the end of World War II in 1945. The two Koreas are technically still at war as there has been no peace treaty between them since the Korean War began in the early 1950s.
