Olympic medalists from North Korea, South Korea and China posed for a selfie after the table tennis mixed doubles medal presentation.
China’s Sun Yingsha and Wang Chuqin defeated North Korea’s Ri Jong-sik and Kim Kum-yong in the final to win gold, while South Korea won bronze with Lim Jong-hoon and Shin Yu-bin beating Hong Kong.
South Korea’s Lim Jong-hoon took the photo of all the medalists together, in which they were all smiling broadly. The photo was taken with a South Korean-made Samsung phone.
“I congratulated them when they were presented as silver medalists,” Lim said after the photo, in quotes from Korean media.
South Korea and North Korea both claim to be the sole legitimate government of all of Korea – which has been divided since September 1945 – with military tensions between the two states and a heavily fortified border.
Prior to these Olympic Games, all individual objects, including mobile phones, were banned from medal ceremonies, and photographs were only allowed to be taken by official media.
All six mixed doubles medalists posed for the selfie (Jean Catuffe/Getty Images)
However, an agreement between Samsung and the IOC allows their products to be used in ceremonies. “Athletes can take creative selfies from different angles with the Galaxy Z Flip6 thanks to its foldable nature,” Samsung said in a press release this week.
The Athlete 365 app comes pre-loaded on Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip6, which was given to competing athletes ahead of its official launch earlier this month, to which competitors’ “victory selfies” can be added.
The shared photo comes just days after 143 South Korean athletes were misrepresented as North Korean during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was forced to issue a “deep apology” for the incident in which the South Korean delegation was announced as the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea”, North Korea’s full official name, when their boat entered the Seine . The formal name of South Korea is Republic of Korea.
North Korea, which has 16 athletes as part of its first delegation since 2016 (it was not represented at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics due to the Covid-19 pandemic), was properly introduced later in the program in French and English .
(Top photo: Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)