I'd feel bad if this weren't North Korea.

Agreed Invictus!

I do feel bad. They are athletes, not politicians. The Olympics are supposed to be about putting aside political differences so pure athleticism can compete. National pride and cometition is all there is with the athletes and a snub like that is so political as to warrant North Korea boycotting the rest and rightfully so.

What a sap you are.

Geez you can't put political matters behind in a freakin soccer game?

Which is why four soccer players at the last World Cup from the North Korea team attempted to defect during the tournament. There is no national pride in that country.

Not when it's a unspeakably cruel dictatorship like North Korea. They shouldn't even be going.


And go we really need Olympic soccer anyway? Isn't the World Cup enough?

Olympic football does a lot to raise awareness and publicity for women's football.

Shameful & pathetic ...... what a joke !!

Hitler's Germany hosted the Olympics. It's open to all nations, not just those that agree with you politically. And every nation at it should be treated with at least enough respect to fly the proper flag.

I mean, North Korea still sent them to London, they could easily have kept them home. They deserve to at least get their flag flown.

It's not political. I have no problem with Iran or China or Venezuela going. But North Korea is such a monstrous state that they should be kept out of the Olympics as a matter of solidarity with their oppressed people.

They've been pretty progressive about letting their athletes go to other countries to compete unlike a lot of countries in the "oppressed dictatorship" category historically. Aren't you kind of punishing the people that you see as the victims if you're not allowing them to compete on a global stage?

North Korea should definitely be in the Olympics! After all, what better chance will those athletes ever have of escaping than their one chance in their lives to go to a foreign country?

As bad as it may sound, the message sent by having North Korea be the lone country banned from the games would probably do more good for the people at large in the long run than damage to the athletes in the short run.

Naturally you won't bring down the Kim dynasty with an Olympic boycott, but it'll do its part to delegitimize that dreadful government.

Much more than one chance...they play home and home series in the Asian World Cup qualifiers, they play friendlies in other countries, they go to the World Cup when they qualify, they go to the World Cup when they qualify.

President Eden is right about that, though. It might be worth letting them go just so the athletes can defect. Not sure how realistic that is since it probably means at least a trip to the gulag for their families...

I'm uncomfortable being a world policeman, unlike a lot of Americans, and that makes me uncomfortable with judging exactly one country as being head and shoulders worse than the rest and deserving of a ban. Because there's a lot of people in the world that would judge the USA as being worse than the rest, there's really no universal opinion on these sorts of matters. And regardless of if they deserve it, they aren't banned NOW.

It wouldn't be America, it would be the IOC.

And if you can't see North Korea for the vile, evil state that it is then you have no sane sense of morality. America has its flaws, but nothing which compares to what goes on there.

@ SacredDigits: "I can't believe this was a mistake"

Oh come on, of course it was a mistake. We British are incompetent, not malicious.

I don't believe in the concept of universalism.

Well that's a ridiculous way to think. Effectively, you think that gulags, building nukes while a famine is killing millions, and a civil society that seems to use 1984 as a how-to book would be really bad in America but are somehow acceptable in North Korea.

If all people are equal then all have the same rights, and violations of those rights are wrong wherever they happen. I suppose you disagree, though.

If you don't believe in a universal ethics, than the only question of morality becomes who has the Power to enforce their version.

I don't want to live in that world, and neither do you.

It was obviously a mistake. When the UK Government want to upset North Korea they just go ahead and upset North Korea by saying what awful leadership they have. This is done on quite a regular basis. Putting up the wrong flag on a digital screen on purpose would be on a par with writing "TWAT" on the inside of a friend's mathsbook when he wasn't looking. It serves no purpose and simply isn't done once you're older than 14.


As a side issue, football has no place in the Olympics.

MY GOD! POLITICS AT THE OLYMPICS?!

WHAT NEW SPORE OF MADNESS IS *THIS?*

North Korea is upset by anything, I'm not surprised they walked off...however, I can't believe their undying patriotism allowed them to return to the field and play after being snubbed.

Invictus, that was all under Kim Jong Il. Lets give Kim Jong Un a chance, and see if he's the reformer some analysts think he is. He's already made some (relatively small) steps towards opening up the economy and taking control of it away from the military.

Back to the topic of this thread, it was obviously a mistake. Someone probably saw "Korea" on the sheet and put up the first Korean flag that was in the database. Also, North Korea should not be banned from the Olympics. Its....unOlympic.

@goldfinger:

Yeah...don't hold your breath.

Just sayin'. ;)

Man, I tried my hardest to call down the thunder of putin33...hopefully he'll weigh in eventually.

I don't know obi, Kim Jong Un might make some major reforms. Like if someone criticizes the level of starvation rations issued by the state, only the offender and his immediate family will be sent to death camps instead of his whole extended family. Progress indeed! All hail the glorious leader!

Kim Jong dead ..... I didn't even know he was il

How is it that I keep agreeing with Draug. damnit.

Kim Jong Un deserves no chance. If you don't close the gulags on your first day in power you're an irredeemable piece of shit.

I agree it was probablyva mistake, but this call to ban a country from the Olympics is beyond wrong and completely unprecedented. Countries have been known to boycott the games but I've never heard of a country being banned. I could be wrong about that, but it goes against the spirit of the games *and* it punishes the athletes. Of course I also believe that the embargo against Cuba punishes the people not the regime. So what do I know...

Anybody ever been to Cuba ....... what's it like?

South Africa was banned from 1962 to 1992 due to apartheid, but that's the only one I can think of.

Such a mistake is not unprecedented but since it's North Korea, people start to weave theories how it was supposed to flip the regime off. I don't remember seeing a thread here back in March about Kazachstan when their gold medailist had to stand through Borat's version of their national anthem in Kuwait.

It's good to remind ourselves how different countries see things such as flags. For Brits this sort of thing would be no big deal, maybe even amusing, and the concept of leaving the field of play because of it would be unthinkable. Other countries, such as North Korea and the USA, treat national symbols with almost godlike reverence and become offended more easily.

As it was us who invited them here we have a duty to be understanding and sympathetic to their point of view, however ridiculous and idiotic we may privately believe them to be.

@uly - What was back in March? What did he win a gold medal for? Wasn't an Olympic one for sure, so please let us know.

Nevermind, found an article. The 10th Arab Shooting Championships. Not a world or even "western" event. I must say the lady who won the gold showed a lot of class, but playing the wrong anthem at a localized event versus something in which the world is watching is a very different stage and level of faux paux.

Maybe a different level but borat is completely making a mockery of the anthem. That is pretty bad.

Agreed. I'm just saying that because it was a different stage (Arab world, not entire world), fewer people knew about it. It was still a significant slight, especially as the song itself isn't even the same tune and the lyrics are so obscene.

Sure, it was an event of lesser significance but it was covered by media all around the world because the fuck up itself was much more serious. It's just when it happens to North Korea, people think about it too much. Mixing the flags of "similar" countries is quite popular, just ask Slovakians and Slovenians ;)

Also, somewhat similar situation happened 2 days ago on Regent Street, where they put down the Taiwanese flag. Not a high-profile place in regard to the Olympics but also definitely not a mistake.

If South Africa can be banned for apartheid, then North Korea certainly can and should for its even worse human rights abuses.

North Korea really means well don't they, and isn't that what counts? Maybe we should just leave how the world treats North Korea up to the Chinese. That would be a big change from how things are run now.

The problem is that the two countries are, officially, "The Republic of Korea" and "The Democratic People's Republic of Korea." Do you know which is which without looking it up? Pretty easy for a graphics mook to click on the wrong one.

That one's easy.

The lower the western opinion of any given country, the more likely it is to have the words "Democratic" and "People's" in its name.

I'm fairly certain the reason the team didn't take the field was that, if they had, their political observers would have reported it to the regime back home and they, along with their families, would be sent to death camps. Having watched several documentaries on North Korea, it's simply frightening the silly, insignificant things that warrant being sent to death camps (displaying the picture of the glorious leader in the wrong way, speaking with foreigners allowed into the nation without a political representative present, criticizing any aspect of the regime, etc).

It really is like 1984; these athletes would be the equivelant of "outer party members" and enjoy a moderately less miserable experience than the general population. They of course would go out of their way to protect that existence by playing along as much as possible with the propaganda line