Dictatorial North Korea Persists in Rio Olympics 2016

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The spirit of Olympics is dictated by sportsmanship but even this couldn’t overpower the dictatorship of North Korea over its athletes.

While Rio Olympics made headlines by providing the athletes with over 40 condoms each, but while some athletes had the sexual freedom, on other hand, some didn’t even have the liberty to interact.

Samsung being one of the major official sponsors of Olympics 2016, decided to distribute 11,200 handsets of the new range of Samsung Galaxy S7 smartphones, specially designed for this international event. Olympics has a tradition of providing the delegates some souvenir, and this time it is these phones.

Dictatorial north korea persists in Olympics
Source : Samsung

This new range has Olympic rings embossed at the back of the phone with the colors of Olympics circling the earpiece, camera and buttons along with ‘regular’ features like Snapdragon 820, 5.5 inch AMOLED curved screen and 4 GB of RAM.

However, while these devices were distributed at the opening ceremony of Rio Olympics, but none of the 31 delegates of North Korea was carrying them. The manager of the North Korean Team has collected the smartphones, as per the reports by Radio Free Asia (RFA) but none of the athletes possess it.

Weird, isn’t it?

But it’s not surprising; you can and must expect such things from North Korea. This apparently has been done to restrict the athletes from interacting with the outer world. The information about the outside world is provided in filtered form to North Koreans. They are neither allowed to interact with the outside world nor know about them. Similar, scenario prevails during Olympics.

You will be shocked to know that the North Korean athletes are not even allowed to go on sightseeing in Rio.

However, one obvious reason that seems to surfacing is the fact that Samsung is based in South Korea and the two nations are rivals since World War II.

But the two female athletes, North’s Hong Un-Jong and South’s Lee Eun-ju were seen busting this tension and sharing a happy moment while clicking a selfie.

Dictatorial north korea persists in Olympics
Source : Trust.org, South’s Lee Eun-ju North’s Hong Un-Jong taking selfie during Rio Olympics 2016

Nevertheless, the dictatorial rule in North Korea can be witnessed when though on surface level, the public has the right to vote but, only one candidate is on the list. And when someone opts for veto, then the ‘free’ person need to assail the power in presence of people.

Though North Korea might be dictatorial over its people when demanding for five gold medals from each athlete, and in confiscating the smartphones leaving everyone intrigued over the reasons, but the spirit of Olympics overpowered these two athletes.