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

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

China’s Sun Yingsha and Wang Chuqin beat North Korea’s Ri Jong-sik and Kim Kum-yong in the final to win gold, as South Korea won bronze with pair Lim Jong-hoon and Shin Yu-bin defeating Hong Kong.

South Korea’s Lim Jong-hoon took the photo of all the medalists together in which they were all smiling broadly. The picture was taken with a South Korean-made 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 partitioned since September 1945 — with military tensions between the two states and a heavily fortified border.

Prior to this Olympics, all individual items including mobile phones were banned from medal ceremonies, with photos only being allowed to be taken by official media.

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

The Athlete 365 app is preloaded on Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip6, which was given to competing athletes prior to its official launch earlier this month, into which the “victory selfies” of competitors can be added.

The shared photo comes just days after 143 South Korean athletes were incorrectly introduced as North Korean during the Olympics opening ceremony.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was forced to issue a “deep apology” for the incident which saw the South Korean delegation announced as the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” the full official name of North Korea, as their boat passed down the Seine. The formal name of South Korea 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 Tokyo Olympics in 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic), was properly introduced later in the program in French and English.

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