Lim Jong-hoon of South Korea takes a selfie with North Korean silver medalists Kim Kum-yong and Ri Jong-sik, heart, with Chinese language gold medalists Wang Chuqin and Solar Yingsha flanking South Korean Shin Yu-bin.
Jared C. Tilton/Getty Photographs
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Jared C. Tilton/Getty Photographs
Their two nations are famously divided. However ping-pong diplomacy is powerful — and so it unfolded that after competing in desk tennis on the Paris Olympics, athletes from North Korea and South Korea chatted and smiled as they posed for a selfie collectively. China’s workforce joined, rounding out the picture.
In a second that has gone viral, the gamers had simply acquired their medals for the blended doubles competitors within the South Paris Enviornment when one of many South Korean athletes produced a cellphone for a contemporary Olympic custom: a gaggle picture on the podium.
The picture was posted to the Olympics’ official Korean-language account; a video of the athletes posing and smiling additionally grew to become a sensation.
North Korea’s duo of Kim Kum-yong and Ri Jong-sik had loads to have a good time. The No. 16 seed earned silver after dealing upsets to extremely ranked groups from Japan and Hong Kong and incomes a spot within the last towards top-ranked China, which received gold. That is North Korea’s first Olympics since Rio in 2016, having sat out the pandemic-delayed video games in Tokyo.
The North Koreans by no means confronted South Korea’s workforce of Lim Jong-hoon and Shin Yu-bin, who have been relegated to the bronze medal match after shedding to China’s formidable Wang Chuqin and Solar Yingsha on the alternative facet of the bracket. It’s the primary desk tennis medal for South Korea because the London Video games in 2012.
Then all of them got here collectively for a selfie, a doc of pleasant celebration on the podium.
The scene is being hailed as a really human second that transcends borders and governments, an instance of the Olympics’ energy to unite individuals via sport.
And within the case of those two nations, it’s additionally a reminder that whereas the demilitarized zone divides the north and south, it didn’t sever centuries’ price of Koreans’ shared household ties and tradition.
For Lim, the Olympic medal brings a notable fringe profit. Underneath South Korean legislation, he’s granted an exemption from his necessary 18-month army service — a time period that was set to start weeks after he returned from the Olympics, as The Korea Herald studies.
The athletes’ second of selfie diplomacy got here days after what had been an unlucky begin to the South Korean delegation’s go to to the Paris Olympics. In the course of the opening ceremonies’ parade of athletes, an announcer mistakenly hailed them as representing the Democratic Individuals’s Republic of Korea — a.ok.a., North Korea.
The Olympics issued an apology after that gaffe.
