There are a few mistakes you cannot make when introducing countries. This is among the biggest.
The Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony was an absolutely stunning display of the country’s history of culture and athletics.
We saw a re-enactment of Marie Antionette’s beheading followed by a heavy metal concert immediately after a rendition of Les Mis. We saw Celine Dion perform publicly (atop the Eiffel Tower!) for the first time since she was diagnosed with stiff-person syndrome in 2022. We had plenty of Assassin’s Creed jokes and one of the most sexually explicit scenes in Opening Ceremony history.
Yet the grand opening to the Paris Games wasn’t without a few gaffes.
The Olympic flag was hung upside down while Italy’s flag-bearer lost his wedding ring in the Seine.
But those are pretty minor issues compared to what happened when South Korea made its entrance at the ceremony. In both English and French, the delegation of 143 athletes was introduced to the crowd (and viewers across the globe) as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — better known worldwide as North Korea.
The boat, however, correctly displayed the South Korean flag and another flag bearing the country’s official name of the Republic of Korea.
An error occurred in our broadcast when introducing the team of the National Olympic Committee (NOC) of the Republic of Korea during the Opening Ceremony, we apologise sincerely. pic.twitter.com/LfUPLrtaYv
— IOC MEDIA (@iocmedia) July 27, 2024
The International Olympic Committee immediately apologized, per ESPN:
“We deeply apologize for the mistake that occurred when introducing the Korean athletes during the broadcast of the opening ceremony,” the IOC’s official Korean language account said in a post on X.
IOC president Thomas Bach will speak with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Saturday to further convey an apology over the incident, South Korea’s vice sports minister said in Paris.
North Korea does have a small delegation of 16 athletes appearing at the Olympics for the first time since Rio de Janeiro and were correctly introduced during the Opening Ceremony.
