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| Olena Kostevych and Bogdan Nikishin, of Ukraine, carry their country's flag during the opening ceremony in the Olympic Stadium at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Friday, in Tokyo. AP-Yonhap |
Broadcast stuns viewers with scathing representative images of countries, factual errors
By Kang Hyun-kyung
MBC went too far during its coverage of the Tokyo Olympic opening ceremony on Thursday, so much so that the broadcaster found it extremely challenging to make up for the mistakes.
Its hours-long livestream of the ceremony was filled with factual errors including nonsensical, scathing and discriminatory descriptions of some countries which sparked a furious online backlash.
When Chilean athletes marched during the opening ceremony, MBC used the image of the Routes of Santiago de Composte, a network of four Christian pilgrimage routes in northern Spain. MBC staff seemed to have confused the Chilean capital Santiago with the Spanish pilgrimage routes of the same name. It also used an image of the Atlantic Ocean, instead of the Pacific, for Micronesia, a tiny country consisting of 2,100 islands in the Western Pacific Ocean.
MBC left its viewers speechless with its inappropriate images for several countries. It used salmon for Norway and pizza for Italy. When the athletes of Republic of the Marshall Islands marched, the TV caption told viewers, "It was a nuclear test site for the United States."
Some of the graphics used were insulting. For instance, the image of Bitcoin was used for El Salvador as if the TV station was trying to remind viewers of the Central American country's adoption of the virtual currency as its official tender. An image of riots was used to represent Haiti.
The broadcast's reckless uses of past tragedies as representative images of some countries and awkward descriptions of some other countries also raised the eyebrows of viewers. The image of the tragic 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster popped up on TV screen when Ukrainian athletes marched.
Meanwhile, MBC described Australia as the "Heartland of Oceania" and Iran as "the Center of Islam," phrases that left viewers scratching their heads.
The messy MBC coverage of the opening ceremony drew the ire of some internet users. Some called MBC's broadcast a nightmare.
One wrote, "They are totally insane." Another wrote, "What they did appears to be intentional, rather than unintentional. How could such obvious things not have been screened by some insiders before they actually aired on TV?"
One internet user said what MBC did would be like featuring the collapses of Sungsu Bridge or Sampoong Department Store in southern Seoul in the 1990s as representative images for South Korea. "How would South Koreans have felt if some foreign media had featured them as the representative images of this country?" the internet user asked.
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| MBC broadcasters apologize for the use of inappropriate images to represent some countries during the Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony on Thursday. Following the on-air apology, the TV station issued its official apology a day later. Yonhap |
MBC made repeated apologies for its offensive descriptions of some countries, but this didn't stop the furious online backlash.
On Saturday, MBC issued an official statement regarding the blunder, a day after its on-air apology near the end of the opening ceremony.
The TV station said it took the case seriously, vowing to take measures to prevent similar incidents in the future.
"We used some inappropriate images and expressions while airing the Olympic opening ceremony Friday night. We sincerely apologize to the countries and their people, as well as our viewers," it said in the statement. "We prepared the images and captions to introduce each country in an effective way because the time assigned for each country was so short but we were careless. It was an obvious mistake and cannot be justified under any circumstances."
MBC vowed to look into the questionable materials and take disciplinary action against those responsible, depending on the findings.
Kim Sae-won, a comparative culture analyst and author of the book "Global Culture Code," said MBC's seemingly mocking and discriminatory portrayals of some countries not only did a disservice to the TV station itself but also to the image of South Korea.
"The Olympics seeks goals like peace, harmony and reconciliation. But MBC did the opposite," she told The Korea Times over the phone. "Every country has a dark side which they don't want to share openly with others. But MBC used those as their representative images. What they did is far from the Olympic spirit."
Kim urged MBC's leadership and executives involved in the decision to take responsibility for the horrific blunder that hurt South Korea's reputation.
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