North Korea Has 31 Athletes Competing in the Rio Olympics
It seems to me that if the South Africans were banned from the Olympics because of their Apartheid policies than why is North Korea with its far worse human rights violations allowed in the Olympics?:
North Korea made a restrained, orderly entrance at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics on Friday.
The North Korean delegation, with male weightlifter Choe Jon-wi as its flagbearer, marched into Maracana Stadium as the 156th country in the “Parade of Nations” as per the Portuguese alphabet.
Choe was followed by Yun Song-bom, the chef de mission, and several other members trailed them, waving their national flag.
They weren’t carrying mobile phones or camcorders to capture the moment, as most other athletes or officials did.
Choe Ryong-hae, the powerful vice chairman of Pyongyang’s State Affairs Commission, rose from his seat to greet the delegation.
North Korea has 31 athletes competing in nine sports here, including weightlifting and judo. It won four golds at the 2012 London Olympics, three from weightlifting, and finished 20th place overall in the medal standing. [Yonhap]
Welllll…. Apartheid lasted from 1948 to 1994 and the IOC really didn’t get off it’s collective stupid sports entertainment a55 until 1964 and it didn’t matter much in terms of the 64 waste of time/money/etc. because South Africa basically self-banned.
So like that other international organization famous for not getting anything done, the IOC kept it on the back burner until people had enough and civil rights was a hot issue. Faced with the US passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 one of the remaining bastions of idiotic racism began to erode and South Africa was alone in that fight.
As for the DPRK well what they’re doing isn’t so rare as state sponsored segregation so what’s the IOC going to do? Ban everyone that oppresses their own people? The way things are going and depending on your interpretation of “oppress” how long until the Olympics consist of only Mongolia, St. Kitts, and Antarctica? :silly:
By the way why do you insist on thinking the Olympics isn’t anything more than a money making venture in the realm of sports entertainment? It’s no global official thing representative of anything other than our inability to cast off our role as “the mob” and stop caring so much about stupid 5h1t…
Sorry couldn’t resist. 😉