Culture

If You Thought Channel 7’s Opening Ceremony Coverage Was Bad, You Need To See South Korea’s

South Korea's Olympic broadcaster used photos to "represent" each country, like pizza for Italy and Chernobyl for Ukraine.

by Michelle Rennex  26 July 2021
south korea opening ceremony images chernobyl ukraine

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On Friday, the Tokyo 2020 Olympics officially kicked off with Japan’s much-anticipated Opening Ceremony.

Along with each participating country walking their flags into a crowdless Olympic Stadium, the Opening Ceremony included traditional Japanese tap dance, a globe made out of a constellation of drones, and Naomi Osaka lighting the Olympic flame.

But sadly, yet unsurprisingly, Australia’s coverage of the event has left a lot to be desired.

Not only did The Australian question whether Osaka was “Japanese enough” to light the Olympic flame, but the lazy commentary during Channel 7’s broadcast of the Opening Ceremony was nothing short of racist.

As the four-hour event played out, Bruce McAvaney and Johanna Griggs’ questionable commentary clouded the opening event. Desperate to fill in any quiet time with the sound of their own voices, horrific lines like “Anyone else remember when Rwanda had a genocide?” and “These are a people who have known many troubled times” were spat out as the Rwandan and Palestinian teams entered the stadium.

In response to Channel 7’s hosts deciding to not add any real substance with their commentary, the network was rightfully dragged for their surface-level, casually racist take on the Opening Ceremony.

But if you thought Channel 7’s commentary was bad, let me introduce you to the unbelievably grim way South Korea decided to broadcast the Opening Ceremony.

As first flagged by Seoul-based journalist Raphael Rashid, South Korean broadcaster MBC decided to display different images on-screen to represent each country as they walked into Olympic Stadium.

While relatively innocent at first — with photos of pizza appearing for Italy, sushi for Japan, and shots of salmon popping up for Norway — the images quickly took a turn for the worst when countries with less notable foods begun entering the stadium.

For example, when the Haitian, Romanian, and Ukrainian teams entered the stadium, MBC chose to display images of upheaval, Count Dracula, and Chernobyl, respectively.

Along with the questionable images, the accompanying commentary and on-screen explanations for each country weren’t much better.

“When Haitian athletes entered the stadium, an on-screen explanation said ‘the political situation is fogged by the assassination of the president’,”tweeted Rashid. “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.”

The Korea Herald reports that Nauru didn’t fair much better with MBC simply introducing the county as a place “experiencing an economic decline with the depletion of its major natural resource phosphorite”.

In a shock to no one, the South Korean broadcaster was immediately criticised for their “inappropriate” images that either played into stereotypes or were just terribly offensive.

In response, MBC issued a formal apology where the broadcaster shared it was “deeply sorry and regretful” for the “inexcusable mistake”.

“MBC used inappropriate images and captions to introduce some countries during the Tokyo Olympics Opening Ceremony on July 23. We sincerely apologise to the countries concerned and the viewers,” a statement read.

“The images and captions are intended to make it easier for the viewers to understand the entering countries quickly during the Opening Ceremony,” MBC continued. “However, we admit that there was a lack of consideration for the countries concerned, and inspection was not thorough enough. It is an inexcusable mistake.”

“We will thoroughly investigate the process of image selection, subtitling, and inspection and strictly take follow-up measures based on the investigation result.”

Despite the apology, this actually isn’t the first time MBC has been criticised for their Olympics coverage.

During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the South Korean broadcaster also used insulting captions to describe countries as they entered the stadium and was allegedly cautioned by the Korea Communications Standards Commission for it.

According to Raphael Rashid, the MBC introduced Chad as “the dead heart of Africa”, said that  Zimbabwe had “murderous inflation” and described the Cayman Islands as “famous as a tax haven for establishing offshore funds” in 2008. Yikes.

(Image: Getty Images/picture alliance)