By Sunny Lee
Korea Times Correspondent
BEIJING ― The leak of the opening ceremony rehearsal of the Beijing Olympics by SBS, a major Korean broadcaster network, continues to gather a firestorm in China.
On July 31, SBS aired a portion of the opening ceremony rehearsal, lasting about two minutes, claiming that its crew shot the footage legitimately. The Beijing Olympic's organizing body said that was not the case. SBS offered an apology.
Since then, the incident, instead of subsiding, has been continuing to draw a battery of flak in China.
The controversy of SBS, now widely dubbed here as an ``Olympic spoiler,'' has transferred its venue on to television and radio talk shows, newspaper commentaries, Internet blogs and message boards, not to mention gossip on the street.
During a radio chat show, a woman vented her anger. ``The opening ceremony should be a surprise for everyone. SBS stole the fun,'' she said, calling SBS a ``thief.''
A Chinese blogger said China should boycott all Korean products.
For days in a row, Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV has been putting SBS on its late-night talk shows where a participant host made fun of the broadcaster's name, using English initials of SBS.
Chinese Internet portals such as Sina.com and 163.com are, en masse, polling on how people view the incident, ranging from ``strong condemnation'' to ``severe violation of journalist ethics.''
Rose Luqiu, a famous TV anchor in China for her coverage of the Iraq War, wrote in her blog that the SBS claim pf an ``exclusive'' of the rehearsal is unwarranted because the opening ceremony rehearsal had been actually filmed by other media.
``For accredited press, it is not hard to film this event,'' she said. She called for a punishment for SBS to prevent ``the start of a bad trend.''
The overwhelming interest and anger by Chinese people is a great contrast to the Chinese government, which has been keeping a rather low profile over the incident.
Sun Weide, the spokesman for Beijing's Olympic organizing committee, expressed regret over the SBS action. But then, he tried to downplay the significance of the leaked footage.
``The fragments cannot give the audience a full picture of the spectacular opening ceremony,'' he said, without elaborating on whether SBS will be penalized.
Observing this contrast, a Korean journalist working for a major newspaper in Beijing said, ``For the Chinese government, it wasn't too bad an accident. Prior to the leak, the Chinese government had been facing mounting criticisms from the foreign media on the air quality in Beijing. Now, people are paying all their attention to SBS.''
SBS also actually shot a public relations film for the Beijing Olympics, by saying in its now much-criticized video clip that the opening ceremony would be ``the most splendid show on the planet.''
It wasn't bad for SBS either, the Korean journalist continued: ``Now the whole world knows SBS.''