A South Korean television network has apologised after using inappropriate images and captions to describe countries during the Tokyo 2020 opening ceremony on Friday.
The broadcaster, MBC, used images of pizza to describe Italy, an upheaval for Haiti, Chernobyl for Ukraine, salmon for Norway, when athletes from those countries entered the stadium for the opening ceremony.
In its captions broadcasting the ceremony, the network referred to the Marshall Islands as “once a nuclear test site for the United States”, and Syria as the country that has “a civil war going on for 10 years”.
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In the opening ceremony shorn of glitz and overshadowed by a pandemic but defined by hope, tradition and gestures of diversity, Japan’s global superstar Naomi Osaka on Friday lit the Olympic cauldron to mark the start of the world’s biggest sporting event.
After its use of offensive images and explanations prompted criticism online, MBC issued an apology saying: “Inappropriate images and captions were used to introduce some stories. We apologised to those countries including Ukraine and our viewers”.
UNIFORMS GRAB ATTENTION
The bizarre captions from South Korea were not the only thing that raised eyebrows during the Olympics ceremony.
Italy’s uniforms, which featured the country’s flag colours represented in a large circle, received mixed opinions.
Some Twitter users said the Armani-designed outfits looked like a “pie chart” or “badly-sliced pizzas”, while others were more direct.
“Italy has literally the best clothes designers in the world and yet the uniforms are the worst one,” one tweet said.
Germany’s Olympic uniform for the Tokyo Games also did not go down well with some athletes and social media users.
“Who is responsible for this outfit. Come on now,” Olympic basketball player Maodo Lo said on Instagram about the mint green outfit with a rather extravagant vest and neon-coloured shoes.
Teammate Niells Giffey agreed, asking makers Adidas and Team Germany “who thinks this up?”
Internet users were not impressed either during the opening ceremony.
“No one can take away the gold medal for ugliest uniform from us”, one person tweeted. Another said: “you can rely on the tastelessness of German uniforms at Olympic Games.”
Adidas defended themselves, saying that the outfits were created together with the DOSB athletes commission and got a lot of positive feedback when officially presented two months ago.
INDIA, INDONESIA, THEN … UKRAINE?
Meanwhile, as countries marched during the national parade during the opening ceremony, some global viewers were confused at the order of the national parade, where Andorra was followed by Yemen.
Unlike previous Olympics held in Japan, where athletes marched into the stadium in the English order of their names, the Tokyo 2020 Games followed Japan’s writing system.
“After Italy, Israel, Iraq, India, Indonesia I thought there was a system but that was followed by Uruguay, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and overall it seems random,” one perplexed viewer wrote on Twitter.
“Can anyone explain why Ireland got to go 4th in the Parade of Nations? So intrigued as to the running order of team entering the stadium,” another user said.
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In Japan, there are two alphabets, comprised of 46 characters each, to write the modern language’s sounds phonetically. Written Japanese also uses imported Chinese characters, about 2,000 of which are taught through junior high school and are required for basic reading of newspapers and official documents.
The order follows Japanese pronunciation syllable by syllable: a, i, u, e, o, ka, ki, ku, ke, ko and so on through the list of consonants paired with the five vowels.
So countries were listed by their Japanese pronunciation. For example, Yemen – pronounced “iemen” in Japanese – came near the front, not the back.
So that’s how Seychelles can come right before Equatorial Guinea and Benin just ahead of Venezuela.
Reporting by dpa, Reuters
