K-viewers Appalled by MBC Coverage of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics Opening Ceremony with Offensive Stereotype Pictures of Certain Countries Including a Picture of Chernobyl Disaster When the Ukraine Team Paraded
Okay, who wants to bet some MBC intern was tasked with picking a picture for each nation during the Parade of Nations at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony and just went Googling and picked the first image that popped up. How else to explain some of the offensive, bad taste, and just plain dumb pictures and/or captions accompany certain countries during MBC’s coverage of the Opening Ceremony, the most egregious being the picture of the Chernobyl power plant disaster when the Ukrainian team walked. *headdesk* Others include showing bitcoin for El Salvador (which recently made it a legal tender), the recent violent protest in Haiti after the assassination of the president for the Haitian team, pizza for the Italian team (okay, this one is funny), salmon for the Norwegian team (okay, kinda funny too), Marshall Islands was described as once a nuclear testing ground for the United States, and Syria was described as having a civil war that has gone on for 10 years. MBC has since apologized but this story has been picked up in Western media so hopefully MBC doesn’t trip up again for the remainder of its coverage in the next two weeks.
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Apparently they also had a picture of Dracula for Team Romania and as hilarious as that is, the tone-deaf ones (ie. Syria, Ukraine) severely negate its comedic effect. The graphic designer and MBC in general need to be sued at this point.
Not just that, they even included the vaccination rate of each country, like what is that for?
Kinda want to see the faces behind that major blunder by a big SKorean TV network. I mean how weird was that in this digital age where all they needed to do was research properly. It was like an SNL sketch to be honest lol.
Are you sure it’s K-viewers? Much like C-viewers. Ockoala is such a communist propagandist.
Some K-viewers might indeed be appalled but I also saw too many comments of K-viewers condoning and laughing at this effrontery.
I understand it’s not right.
You do realize right? That “K-viewers” aren’t just oh, I dunno, 10k ppl you see commenting on YouTube? It’s a nation so yeah, there are people enraged as much as there are laughing over it.
Dunno about the blogger, but you are naive to be asking that question ?
The country with Bitcoin is El Salvador, not Ecuador.
I find it laughable that MBC really exerted so much effort to be offensive to multiple countries. Like, they could have skipped the annotations because no one is expecting to learn geography factoids from a sports event.
I am so DONE with SK and their constant mockery and disrespect to other countries and cultures. And the dumb excuse they gave in their half-assed apology? Imagine the uproar from their end if a foreign media had used images of suicide or ‘molka’ spycams to represent their country. This is beyond repugnant.
Apparently, this wasn’t MBC’s first rodeo. I read that for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, they introduced Cayman Islands as “famous as a tax haven for establishing offshore funds.” Chad was “the dead heart of Africa” and Zimbabwe had “murderous inflation.” They were supposedly cautioned by Korea Communications Standards Commission. But it clearly didn’t stick. Smh.
Jeezus.
It’s all that nationalistic nonsense. I heard they were flippant in how they introduced other Asian countries too. And did you hear that xenophobic drivel spewed by that politician? Who the hell do they think they are anyway?
Oooooh you made a good point there. 😉
Big let down, considering how many countries are supportive of Korean cars, pop culture, films, tech etc…
A member of SK soccer team snubbed a handshake from NZ player SK lost to NZ in an Olympic soccer match. May have been covid but everyone else was shaking hands & hugging. Lol. You always have one person that messed things up or embarrassed the country.