North Korea and that "incident" in Glasgow

There was a very unfortunate incident yesterday evening in Glasgow prior to a women's football match involving the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK - more commonly known as North Korea) competing in a London 2012 Olympics football match, when the flag of the 'other' country on the Korean Peninsula was shown in error. LOCOG ('London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games') have apologised for the error and after about an hour's delay the DPRK team agreed to return to the field of play after having walked off when they saw the wrong flag being shown.

I hope there will not be similar easily-avoidable (with a bit of care!) gaffes in coming days, although the linked report says that LOCOG have not yet established who made the offending video-clip. Don't they have such 'minor details' on file of who their sub-contractors are, if only so they can settle production invoices? The cynic in me now wonders if there will be found on the production staff someone from one or other of the 'two Koreas' who was trying to make some kind of point. Whatever the case, it was rather unfortunate - it's not as if the two flags are in any way similar (the way for example that the flags of Italy/Ireland or Netherlands/Luxembourg might at first glance be mixed up). One could hardly have imagined a gaffe likely to cause more upset than this one, specially as the two countries are technically still at war with each other.

In any case, here is the anthem and flag of the DPRK; the tune is quite rousing, whatever else one might say about it and that country:

Sunday YouTube - North Korea: Ryugyong Hotel, Pyongyang

This hotel in the 'capital of willows' rises to 105 floors and a height of 330 metres (1,083 feet). It has roughly 360,000 square metres of floor space. Construction began in 1987 and ceased in 1992 in it present state. In 2006 it remained unfinished and unoccupied; if ever completed it would be the tallest hotel in the world and the seventh tallest building. Undoubtedly a proud symbol of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea:



- read more about the country in its Official Webpage; a window into a very different kind of mindset than most of us are familiar with. Interestingly the registrant and administrative contact for this website are in Tarragona, Spain.

PS/ Curiously, but entirely coincidentally (*), there is a very interesting article in today's Sunday Telegraph about the difficult living conditions in North Korea which make some escapees prefer a life of prostitution across the border in China.

* - In fact I have a reserve of suitable YouTube clips for both my Sunday and Midweek YouTubes sufficient for the next several months - the one about North Korea above simply happened to be the next in line for a Sunday outing.