Table tennis champions from the two Koreas take a selfie together
The Paris Olympics opened with some confusion over South Korea’s name, annoying the East Asian country’s officials. Mixed Doubles Table Tennis instead took a group photo on the podium with a Samsung.
Paris (AsiaNews/Agencies) – North and South Korea may be formally at war, but a selfie taken yesterday at the Olympics brought a moment of peace to the peninsula.
Finishing respectively second and third in the Table Tennis Mixed Doubles behind China, North and South Korean athletes posed on the podium after the award ceremony for a selfie taken by South Korea’s Lim Jong-hoon (who played with Shin Yu-bin), using a mobile phone by Samsung, the South Korean tech giant.
“I congratulated them when they were introduced as Silver medallists," Lim told media, referring to the North Korean athletes. The selfie was widely broadcast on South Korean television stations. “This is the true spirit of the Olympics,” said one commentator.
During the opening ceremony of the Games, South Korea was introduced as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea’s formal name, which was then repeated (this time correctly) when the North Korean delegation made its entry.
Addressing the French organising committee and the International Olympic Committee, South Korean Sports Ministry expressed “regret over the announcement,” and asked for a meeting with IOC President Thomas Bach.
No one would have imagined that a few days later the athletes of the two countries would share the podium without problems.
In 2018, at the PyeongChang Winter Games, the two delegations came in together (and in one case even competed together). But subsequently, due to the pandemic, North Korea decided not to send athletes to Tokyo 2020, skipping the Beijing Winter Olympics two years ago as well.
Yesterday's table tennis podium is therefore the first for North Korea to win a medal since the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil).
During the press conference after the award ceremony, the two gold-winning Chinese champions congratulated the North Korean players, calling them a "formidable opponent".
“We learned from Chinese team which is always number one,” North Korea’s Kim Kum-yong said. “We will do better next time to win the gold.”
The North Korean pair did not confirm rumours that they trained in China before the Olympics, a story that is circulating online according to some journalists.
Almost towards the end of the conference, the North Korean team was asked if they felt "rivalry" towards their South Korean opponents, who battled for third place against another Asian team, that of Hong Kong.
Taking the initiative to answer, Kim said: “No, we did not.”
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12/02/2016 15:14
