Fun and Games In Tokyo

There has been fun and games at the Tokyo Olympics 2020 ....

The Tokyo Olympics 2020 - In 2021

 .... and I don't mean the sports.

The opening ceremony was enough, where even the TV coverage has created waves ... firstly the South Korean TV company MBC got into trouble, by deciding to use very strange images, text copy graphics and voice over commentary as each nation entered the stadium.

Chernobyl Image For Ukraine

Amongst the various questionable images to illustrate participating countries at Friday's ceremony they used images of pizza to describe Italy, Chernobyl for Ukraine and salmon for Norway as those countries were announced.

Pizza Image For Italy

• Italy: had a pizza picture.
• Norway: had a salmon picture.
• Haiti: had an on-screen caption about political upheaval.
• Syria: had an on-screen caption about political civil war.
• Chad: had an on-screen caption about it being the "dark heart of Africa".  
• Ukraine: had a picture of the Chernobyl nuclear plant.

Dracula Image For Romania

• Romania: had a picture of Dracula (actually Bela Lugosi who was Hungarian).
•  And a promotional bitcoin poster for El Salvador amongst others.

MBC Olympic TV Images Caused Confusion 

and they then referred in commentary to the U.S Marshall Islands, as a former nuclear testing site for the U.S. as well as showing the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) value of each country (which totally confused everyone).

Twitter and other social media picked up on this but even South Koreans were embarrassed ... one twitter user Not RAPTTAK🔰 said: "Korean here. That does NOT reprents [sic] the way how we see those countries. We were shocked by the rudeness of MBC, And we started to criticize immediately. The photo below [Twitter picture was posted] says MBC:Shame of country, and got 5700RTs. MBC shamed all of us. Sorry to all countries represented."

On the Saturday, MBC issued a formal apology to the "countries concerned and our viewers."
"The images and captions are intended to make it easier for the viewers to understand the entering countries quickly during the opening ceremony," the statement said."However we admit that there was a lack of consideration for the countries concerned and inspection was not thorough enough. It is an inexcusable mistake."

However, they have previous on this type of offence, because at the Opening Ceremony for the 2008 Beijing Olympics they had used similar captions and images for the nations on parade. 

But they were not alone in stirring up trouble. In the US, NBC's map of China did not include Taiwan, or the South China Sea, which China is trying to annexe with the threat of military force. So predictably the new aggressive territory grabbing Chinese government complained, with China's Consulate General in New York criticizing the American network for using "an incomplete map of China." In a statement released on social media Saturday, the consulate's spokesperson said the map "created a very bad influence, and harmed the dignity and emotion of the Chinese people" and urged NBC to "to recognize the serious nature of this problem."

They carried on in the same florid tones: "The Consulate General in New York would like to point out that the map is an expression of national territory, which symbolizes national sovereignty and territorial integrity," adding: "Attempts to use the Olympic Games to play political "tricks" and self-promotion to achieve ulterior motives will never succeed."

Whilst the South Korean TV blunder, just goes to prove my point in other posts, about how culturally imperialistic it is to always expect the rest of the world to share our Western, PC, LGBT, WOKE, BLM concerns, the Chinese attitudes and tones, are increasingly like its aggressive little neighbour North Korea. The idea of partnering with the new capitalist China, which seemed so rosy a couple of decades ago, just looks laughable now.