Thomas Bach, the president of International Olympic Committee (IOC), has apologised to South Korea’s president on the phone after his country’s athletes were identified as North Korean in the Paris Games’ opening ceremony.
As millions of spectators around the world watched the South Koreans float down a river in a barge and wave their flag, an audio broadcast said they were from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. That is the official name of North Korea and the South’s arch-enemy.
South Korea, or the Republic of Korea, reacted angrily. The sports ministry demanded a meeting with International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach, and urged the foreign ministry to file “a strong government-level complaint” with the French government.
Mr Bach called president Yoon Suk Yeol and “apologised sincerely for the mistake in the audio broadcast”, according to a statement posted on the IOC’s website on Sunday.
‘Human error’
“The problem was identified as a human error, for which the IOC is deeply sorry,” the statement said.
Mr Yoon told Bach that the South Korean people were “very shocked and embarrassed”, and asked him to apologise via media and social media, according to Mr Yoon’s office. The IOC has apologised in a post on X in Korean.
North and South Korea split at the end of the Second World War. They fought from 1950 to 1953, and are still technically at war because the Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. Tensions between the two have escalated recently, with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, abandoning a long-standing policy of eventual unification with the South, and instead labelling it a hostile state.
In recent weeks, North Korea has launched more than 2,000 balloons carrying rubbish over their border, with one balloon even falling on the South Korean presidential compound on Wednesday. Seoul has responded by blaring broadcasts of K-pop music and propaganda messages towards the North.
Pyongyang continues to develop its illegal nuclear programme with regular missile tests and is growing closer to Russia. This has helped boost trilateral cooperation between the US, South Korea and Japan. On Sunday, the three signed an agreement to “institutionalise” their security cooperation, including real-time sharing of North Korean missile warning data and joint military exercises.
North Korea blames its neighbours for hostilities. At the weekend, it accused the US and South Korea of “being hell-bent on provoking a nuclear war”, and said it would “totally destroy” them should war break out.
Wrong anthem
Organisers were forced to issue further apologies on Sunday after the wrong national anthem was played in the opening basketball match.
The opening bars of the Sudanese national anthem rang out across the court to crowds expecting the tune of South Sudan’s. The mistake, although swiftly rectified, was met with jeers from the stands.
Players from the team, which is making its first appearance in the competition, called the move “disrespectful”.
Majok Deng told the BBC: “They [the organisers] have to be better because this is the biggest stage, and you know that South Sudan is playing.
“There’s no way you can get that wrong by playing a different anthem. It’s disrespectful,” he added.
Organisers responded: “We present our most sincere apologies to the South Sudan team and their supporters.
“We were able to quickly interrupt the anthem, which was broadcast in error and play the correct anthem before the start of the game.”