IOC chief Bach speaks with President Yoon Suk-yeol after South Korea sought assurances that the mistake would not be repeated.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has apologised after mistakenly portraying the South Korean team as North Korean during the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics.
Sailing down the Seine River in the French capital like other delegations, the South Korean team was introduced as representatives of the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” the official name for North Korea in both English and French.
The announcer used the same introduction for the North Korean delegation.
“We deeply apologize for the mistake that occurred when introducing the South Korean team during the broadcast of the opening ceremony,” the IOC said in a post on its Korean-language X account after the error caused anger among South Koreans.
IOC President Thomas Bach also spoke to South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol on Saturday to express his apology.
Yoon told him that such mistakes should not be repeated and conveyed his wishes for a successful event, the president’s office said Saturday.
Yoon also said people in South Korea, which has hosted both the Summer and Winter Olympics, were shocked and bewildered.
South and North Korea have remained technically at war since their 1950-53 conflict ended with an armistice and demilitarized zone, not a peace treaty. Tensions between the two Koreas have escalated in recent months, and the two have also suspended a key 2018 military agreement.
South Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said in a statement Saturday that it “expresses regret” over the mistaken announcement during the opening ceremony.
South Korea’s vice minister for sports and culture, Jang Mi-ran, a 2008 Olympic weightlifting champion, has also requested a meeting with Bach to discuss the matter, he added.
South Korea’s delegation includes 143 athletes competing in 21 events. North Korea, returning to the Games for the first time since Rio 2016, has sent 16 athletes.
The country’s foreign ministry said it had contacted the French embassy in Seoul, which expressed regret over an “incomprehensible mistake.”
South Korea’s National Olympic Committee announced that it plans to meet with the Paris Olympics organizing committee and the IOC to express its protest. The South Korean committee requested measures to prevent this from happening again.
North Korea has been strengthening its ties with Russia amid its international isolation.
At least one trash-carrying balloon sent across the tense border landed at South Korea’s presidential compound earlier this week for the first time.
North Korea has said the balloons, more than 2,000 of which have been deployed since May, are a response to activists in South Korea who release leaflets and propaganda messages through loudspeakers aimed at undermining the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
