Olympic Blunder: South Korea Misidentified at Paris 2024 Opening

PARIS, France - The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has apologized for misidentifying the South Korean team as North Korean during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympics.

IOC President Thomas Bach personally apologized to South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol in a telephone call, attributing the error to a human mistake in the audio broadcast.

The incident occurred as South Korean athletes were introduced while sailing down the Seine River. 

They were erroneously announced in French and English as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the official name for North Korea.

South Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has requested a meeting with Bach and plans to file a formal complaint with the French government.

IOC spokesperson Mark Adams described the error as "clearly deeply regrettable" and said, "We can only apologize, in an evening of so many moving parts, that this mistake was made."

South Korea's Olympic committee has asked the Paris 2024 organising committee to implement measures to prevent similar incidents in the future.

This is not the first such occurrence at an Olympic event. 

A similar mistake happened at the 2012 London Olympics when the South Korean flag was displayed alongside North Korea's women's football team.