North and South Korean table tennis Olympic medalists pose for shared selfie

Olympic medalists from North Korea, South Korea and China pose for a selfie after the medal ceremony in the mixed doubles table tennis.

China’s Sun Yingsha and Wang Chuqin defeated North Koreans Ri Jong-sik and Kim Kum-yong in the final to win gold, while South Korea won bronze, with the duo of Lim Jong-hoon and Shin Yu-bin beating Hong Kong.

South Korean Lim Jong-hoon took the photo of all the medal winners together, all of them smiling broadly. The photo was taken with a South Korean Samsung phone.

“I congratulated them when they were introduced as silver medalists,” Lim said after the photo, in quotes carried by 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. There are military tensions between the two states and the border is heavily fortified.

Before the Olympics, all loose objects, including mobile phones, were banned from medal ceremonies. Only official media were allowed to take photos.

All six mixed doubles medal winners posed for a selfie (Jean Catuffe/Getty Images)

However, an agreement between Samsung and the IOC allows its products to be used in ceremonies. “Athletes can take creative selfies with the Galaxy Z Flip6 at different angles due to its foldable nature,” Samsung said in a press release this week.

The Athlete 365 app comes pre-installed on Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip6, which was given to participating athletes ahead of the official launch earlier this month. Participants’ “victory selfies” can be added to it.

The shared photo emerged just days after 143 South Korean athletes were wrongly identified as North Korean during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was forced to issue a “profound apology” over the incident in which the South Korean delegation was announced as the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea”, the full official name of North Korea, as their boat sailed down the Seine. South Korea’s official name is the 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 in French and English later in the programme.

(Top photo: Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)