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| Olena Kostevych and Bogdan Nikishin, of Ukraine, carry their country's flag during the opening ceremony in the Olympic Stadium at the 2020 Summer Olympics on July 23. AP-Yonhap |
Several others are replaced but MBC president stays in power
By Kang Hyun-kyung
The head of MBC's news headquarters resigned on Monday to take responsibility for a sequence of serious blunders made by the national television during the Tokyo Olympics.
According to MBC, Min Byung-woo, chief of its news division, offered his resignation during a meeting of executives, and it was accepted by MBC President Park Sung-jae.
Sports division chief Song Min-geun was replaced and MBC Plus President Cho Neung-hoo got a verbal warning, the broadcasting company also said.
Despite the reshuffle, MBC President Park managed to avoid the fallout as he retained his job.
The post-Olympic disciplinary measures were made public, weeks after Park gave a public apology for a series of disastrous blunders the national broadcaster had made during the Olympics.
During a press conference held on July 26, Park said the root cause of MBC's disastrous coverage of the opening ceremony on July 23 was a systemic problem, vowing to launch a taskforce to look deeper into the making of the coverage and discipline those responsible.
Wrapping up the investigation, the committee said executives and staff had displayed poor understanding of human rights, norms and values as well as a lack of mutual respect for the participating countries.
MBC invited a barrage of criticism here and abroad after the opening ceremony for having used discriminative, inappropriate images and captions to introduce the participating countries.
It used an image of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident when Ukrainian athletes were marching, bitcoin for El Salvador and salmon for Norway. It used a caption explaining that Haiti was thrown into instability after its president was assassinated when athletes from the Caribbean island nation entered the stadium.
Blunders followed even after the opening ceremony. MBC used the caption "Thank you!" when a Romanian footballer accidentally scored an own goal against the South Korean team. When a South Korean judo player won a bronze medal, an MBC sportscaster commented "The color of the medal is not what we've wanted though." His insensitive comment was widely criticized.
