Olympic coverage, courtesy the Chosun Ilbo (Korean):
South Korea entered the Main Stadium jointly with North Korea for the second time. The first joint entrance was held during the Sydney games.
The Korean team entered the stadium as the 84th nation after Congo, following Greek alphabetical order.
South Korean volleyballer Ku Min-jung and Kim Sung-ho of North Korea held the flag together. The 72,000 spectators clapped passionately when the united team of the two Koreas entered carrying the unified Korean Olympic banner with a sky-blue sketch of the Korean Peninsula against a white background.
Touching, ain’t it? Or, at the very least, as touching as walking side-by-side with athletes representing a bunch of Stalinist thugs can get. The problem, however, can be found in the beginning of the piece:
The 28th Athens Olympic Games held a gorgeous opening ceremony at Olympic Main Stadium at 2:45 a.m. Saturday (Korea time) in Athens, Greece, the birthplace of the games. The competition will be held for 16 days.
As I write this, it’s 11:45 Friday.
Just because it hasn’t happened yet, however, doesn’t make it any less true.
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7 Comments
Sigh…this “unity entrance” to the olympics by the two Korea’s represent everything that is wrong with the failed Sunshine Policy.
It’s all symbolism, no real unity. Can the athletes of the two countries train together? No. Hang around? No. Have any sort of unmonitored conversation? No.
It’s all a sham. After the barrage of insults and lies against South Korea 2 weeks ago over the 463 defectors, it is simply shameful that S. Korea pretends everything is peachy.
In my 7 years here, I have grown more and more amazed at the extent to which South Koreans, who are in reality the political, economic, military and moral superiors of the North, will without fail kneel down, accept slaps, and say “Thank you sir may I have another?” Incredible. How can such a proud people in all other respects grovel and bum-kiss the way they do to the North?
so they successfully established that their future reunified country is corea and not Korea, and so superseded the Japan only alphabetical sense when it comes to the Olympic march.
“The 72,000 spectators clapped passionately….”
I have also caught the Korean media writing the news before it actually happened. I cannot remember for sure, but I think it also involved spectators “clapping passionately?” when Koreans entered a stadium somewhere.
Yes, I too have noted numerous times “suspect” reporting. I wrote it off to “English version” newspapers needing to meet printing times but this smacks of pure fiction.
“The Sunshine children” will spare no expense nor exageration to put a good face forward. Too bad there is little behind the face.
I just watched the opening ceremonies on Korean TV. Though the Korean narrators did get excited, the audience’s response was surprisingly subdued and could not be described as “passionate” by any description of the word.
I can’t recall the newspaper here in Korea, but one mistakenly released an article claiming that KOrea had won a future Olympic bidding (Pyeongchang) over Canada; this one day before the selection was announced (Canada ended up winning the bid). This less than prophetic article even provided a fictitious description of the Korean delegates response to their “victory,” and even provided quotes.
Korean journalism at its finest.
so they successfully established that their future reunified country is corea and not Korea, and so superseded the Japan only alphabetical sense when it comes to the Olympic march.
Nope, dd. You obviously missed the quoted part “following Greek alphabetical order.”
The Greek alphabet has kappa for the sound that Korea starts with. It doesn’t have separate letters for K and C.
Too bad for you, though, “Japan” written in Greek is ?™?±?€?‰?½???±, starting with Iota, while “Korea” is ???¿????±, starting with a Kappa. Japan still comes before “Korea” in Greek alphabetical order, since iota is before kappa.
However, one might note that any term for Korea, North or South, in Japanese, whether ??“??½, æœ??®®, ?Œ?æœ??®®, or ??³??ª???, comes before æ??æœ? in Japanese alphabetical order. (And the only one that ??¸?????‘??³ precedes is æœ??®®.) So Japanese Olympics might have Korea coming before Japan; most others won’t.
One also must note that those dastardly Japanese have arranged for Congo (and Chad, and lots of other countries) to also start with Kappa in Greek alphabetical order, and hence come behind Japan in these Greek Olympics.