South Korean TV broadcaster MBC used images with a short phrase to describe each country as they walked in during the Olympic Opening Ceremony, arguably the most watched event of all the Olympic days.
Nope, this was not a joke.
It was broadcasted live as the Olympics ceremony unfolded.
Which meant there was no “mistake”, the text and pictures had to be picked and prepared beforehand and hopefully vetted by important people, before thousands others see it live on TV.
This was what the countries were represented with:
Italy: a pizza
Norway: a slab of salmon
Haiti: people protesting
Ukraine: a black and white photo of Chernobyl
When Haitian athletes entered the stadium, the text said “the political situation is fogged by the assassination of the president.”
When Syrian athletes entered, it said “rich underground resources; a civil war that has been going on for 10 years.”
For the Marshall Islands, it said “was once a nuclear test site for the US, and is composed of more than 1,200 islands.”
El Salvador was introduced with a picture representing Bitcoin.
These are the literal translation from the Korean text.
It is absolutely horrifying, but 100% true.
To make things worse, it was not the first time they did such a terible mistake.
MBC did the same thing back in 2008 for the Beijing Olympics.
They introduced Cayman Islands as “famous as a tax haven for establishing offshore funds.”
Chad was “the dead heart of Africa” and Zimbabwe had “murderous inflation.”
Did no one learn their lesson in anyway?
How does one make such ridiculous mistakes in the first place?
I mean even if you take the Korean language and interpret it as what it is, the context and meaning is still awfully wrong.
How many layers of checks and vetting are there?
Is it possible for such distasteful comments to get on live TV without anyone vetting it first?
MBC did apologize after Koreans swarm the internet and started a protest against such nonsense, but to what effect?
The damage had been done and national pride soured.
Making mistakes is fine, as long as we learn from them.
We have to take ownership and make the effort to not repeat them.
But sometimes, just sometimes, some mistakes should never be made at all.
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