As the jubilant South Korean athletes on the above boat during the Opening Ceremony of the Paris Olympics, it must have smarted to be introduced as North Korean by the French and English-speaking TV commentators. A bit of a gut punch. Given increased tensions between North and South Korea, there’s no girth for misidentification. (The International Olympics committee has since issued a written apology to South Korea).

Seeing the above photo of the South Korean athletes waving a flurry of South Korean flags and a blue flag with South Korea’s official name explicitly written on it, I thought: Opening Ceremony commentators, at a minimum, ought to be able to identify participating nations’ flags. As the subtitles on the broadcast feed correctly identified the athletes as South Korean, it’s odd that the commentators butchered the introduction. Perhaps, BTS’ Jin who was one of the Opening Ceremonys’ torchbearers would have been better placed aboard this boat; with him singing and dancing on deck, no one would have mistaken the team as North Korean!

I think it’s uncontroversial to say that, along with flag identification, learning the correct official names and proper pronunciation of each participating country are essential functions of the Olympic Opening Ceremony TV commentator job. (Pardon me, I can’t help but bandy-about the employment law concepts I use everday as a lawyer.)

Indeed, many online have called out the organizers of the 2024 Paris Olympics for their alleged “ignorance and lack of basic world understanding.”

“How hard is it to differentiate South Korea and North Korea when their flag is so different?” one fan remarked.

I get South Koreans’ anger since Olympic organizers have confused the two countries’ flags in the past. At the 2012 London Olympics, Olympic organizers posted the South Korean flag on a jumbo screen as a North Korean player was introduced before a women’s soccer match, leading the North Koreans to refuse to take the field for nearly an hour. “

I’m sure many of you think South Koreans are overreacting to this snafu; I disagree. As Paul Youngbin Kim Ph.D, a South Korean psychologist noted, this incident “did reflect a microaggressive theme commonly experienced by Asians: namely, the homogenizing of incredibly diverse Asian cultures (Yeo et al., 2019).” As Mr. Kim shared, as an example of how Asians are treated like a monolith, recently, during a soccer match, an opposing player called Korean soccer player Hwang Hee-Chan “Jackie Chan.” (Chan, who is an actor not a soccer player, is actually from Hong Kong.) I can’t even.

Frankly, being an Opening Ceremony commentator would terrify me as someone not particularly well-versed in flags or the nitty gritty of Geography. My poor kids are victims of my anxiety about my shoddy Geography education and/ or my innate inability to absorb geographical facts. Most recently, I raised one brow when my nine-year-old daughter sweetly asked if Canada was part of the United States (clearly conflating the fact that Canada is part of the continent of North America). Good Lord! Don’t tell me kids can just Google stuff so there’s no point in making them memorize facts about Geography! I will balk.

As someone who could never pass muster as an Opening Ceremony commentator here’s my silly quiz to see if you have the chops for this job:

1. See these two flags: what country’s flag is (A)? What country’s flag is (B)? (Add one point for each correct answer)

2.What is the official name of South Korea? (add two points)

3. What is the official name of North Korea? (add two points)

4. Is South Korea in East Asia or Southeast Asia? (add one point)

5. How many time zones does China have? (add two points)

6. What’s the smallest country in Asia (by population and land mass) ? (add four points)

7. What is Bangkok, Thailand’s full name? (add ten points)

8. What Asian country is the only country in the world whose flag isn’t rectangular? (add six points)

9. What five countries are partly in Asia and partly in Europe? (add two points for each correct country)

10. Name which Asian country goes with each flag (add two points each)

A)

B)

C)

D)

E)

11. How do you best pronounce Qatar?(add one point)

A) kay-tar

B) ghu-terh

12. How do you best pronounce Laos? (add one point)

A) Lao

B) Louse (as in rhymes with blouse) or Lao-os

13. How do you best pronounce Sri Lanka?

A) Shri Lanka

B) Sri-Lanka

See Quiz Answers at the end.

Scoring:

0-15 points: Don’t quit your day job to be an Olympics Opening Ceremony commentator because if you do, you will offend nations and possibly contribute to international conflicts.

16 +points: You’d possibly be alright at this job.

I can’t end this post without giving a standing O to the South Korean female archers who shone at the Paris Olympics. For those who watched All of Us are Dead, the gripping Korean drama zombie show in which high school archers in their crisp white uniforms save the day and pierce the zombies with great aplomb, archery is the bad-ass cousin of fencing. (I will never understand why schools in the U.S. offer fencing but not archery.)

I never got into The Hunger Games, but I’d in a heartbeat reverse the hands of time and space to become a heroic young archer. I may even have a good outfit for such endeavors: my early 1990’s patched suede/buckskin, pretty luxe pants that I bought on sale from the GAP; I once wore these beauties to my college English class, which caused a male classmate to ask me (with some awe) if he could touch the knee of my “Daniel Boone pants.” I was killing it!

I love an eccentric Olympic sport and for me, archery fits the bill. I just watched the womens’gold medal archery match, which boiled down to a one arrow shoot off between three competitors. One arrow was “so close to the border between a 9 and 10 that someone had to look at it with a magnifying glass! ” I delight in the fact that the tie was broken with the assistance of a magnifying glass! I mean, are we living on Baker Street during Edwardian times?

Another thing to appreciate from the Olympics: the rare moments that commentators get playful with expressions/words; for instance, while admiring a male gymnast who held a perfectly erect upside-down pose on the rings, one male commentator observed, “[h]e’s as straight as a toothpick in a club sandwich!” Amazing. (Making eccentric observations about the athletes and their performances would be the one thing I could do really well if I was an Olympics commentator!)

Answers:(1)(a) North Korea (b) South Korea; (2)The Republic of Korea; (3) The Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea; (4) East Asia; (5) one time zone; (6)the Maldives; (7) Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit; (8) Nepal; (9)Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkey; (10)(a) China; (b) Lebanon; (c) Nepal; (d)Turkmenistan;(e)Taiwan; (11)(b); (12)(b); (13)(b).

See you next week!