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 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.
The South Korean Ministry of Culture Sports and Tourism Vice Minister Jang Mi Ran 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 Saturday.
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.
Associated Press writer Kim Hyung-jin in Seoul and Graham Dunbar in Paris contributed reporting.
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