It only took one selfie to rekindle tensions between the two Koreas, in the middle of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. On Wednesday, July 31, a selfie of the North and South Korean table tennis teams, medalists and gathered on the same podium, went viral in the context of ongoing tension between Seoul and Pyongyang.
The photo shows South Korean Lim Jong-hoon and his teammate, bronze medalist in mixed doubles with Shin Yu-bin, as well as the North Korean pair, Olympic vice-champions, Ri Jong-sik and Kim Kum-yong, as well as the Chinese Wang Chuqin and Sun Yingsha (gold medal).
Beyond this displayed “camaraderie”, a detail, and not the least, made the already burning embers between the two countries redden: the moment was captured by a Samsung smartphone, South Korea’s flagship of tech. “A selfie with the national flags of the two Koreas and a Samsung phone,” described the popular South Korean daily Joong-ang Ilbo. The only problem is that while the “some 17,000 Olympic athletes” received a Galaxy Flip 6 smartphone as a gift, the North Korean athletes are the only ones who deliberately did not receive one, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) told AFP without giving further details.
Giving a Samsung would violate UN sanctions
The reason? Seoul reportedly feared that the move would violate UN sanctions against Pyongyang, particularly because of its nuclear weapons development program. According to the South Korean Foreign Ministry, a Security Council resolution prohibits “the direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer to North Korea of any industrial machinery,” including smartphones. Samsung’s clarification follows reports by Radio Free Asia, a US-funded media outlet, that North Korea also received these devices, following the publication of the selfie.
A fleeting moment of unity between the two neighbors, technically still at war since the conflict that opposed them from 1950 to 1953 ended in an armistice and not a peace treaty. During the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, North Korea had also refused the Samsung smartphones offered by the organizers.
Outside the festive context of the Olympic Games, relations between the two Koreas are currently going through a difficult period, with Pyongyang announcing on Monday the deployment of 250 missile launchers on the inter-Korean border.