North and South Korea: Olympic table tennis medalists pose for a joint selfie

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

China's Sun Yingsha and Wang Chuqin beat North Korea's Ri Jong-sik and Kim Kum-yong in the ultimate to take gold, while South Korea took bronze, beating Hong Kong's Lim Jong-hoon and Shin Yu-bin pair.

South Korean Lim Jong-hoon took the group photo of all of the medal winners, all smiling broadly. The picture 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 picked up by Korean media.

South Korea and North Korea each claim to be the only real legitimate government of the complete Korea, which has been divided since September 1945. There are military tensions between the 2 states and the border is heavily fortified.

Before these Olympic Games, all personal items, including mobile phones, were banned from medal ceremonies and pictures could only be taken by official media.

However, an agreement between Samsung and the IOC allows the usage of their products in ceremonies. “Thanks to the foldable nature of the Galaxy Z Flip6, athletes can take creative selfies from different angles,” Samsung said in a press release this week.

Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip6, which was handed out to participating athletes ahead of its official launch earlier this month, comes pre-installed with the Athlete 365 app and offers the flexibility so as to add participants' “winning selfies.”

The shared photo was taken just days after 143 South Korean athletes were mistakenly introduced as North Koreans on the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was forced to issue a “deep apology” for the incident during which the South Korean delegation was announced because the “Democratic People's Republic of Korea”, which is the complete official name of North Korea, as their boat passed along the Seine. The official name of South Korea is the Republic of Korea.

North Korea, which is an element of its delegation for the primary time since 2016 with 16 athletes (it was not represented on the 2021 Tokyo Olympics resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic), was presented extensively in French and English later in this system.