A curious and awkward incident occurred at the Asian Games: before the men's field hockey match between South Korea and Bangladesh, organizers mistakenly played North Korea's national anthem instead of South Korea's. As a result, the start of the match was delayed, and the stadium announcer apologized for the error, according to infohub.kz.
According to NUR.KZ, citing RBC, which in turn cited a translation of a Yonhap publication, the mistake was made right before the opening whistle. As music continued to play in the stadium, the referee asked players from both teams to exchange handshakes to fill the pause.
The competitions are taking place in the Japanese prefectures of Aichi and Nagoya. Despite the organizational mishap, the match itself ended in a confident victory for the South Korean team — with a score of 5:0.
Earlier, it was reported that young water polo players of Kazakhstan's national team performed the national anthem themselves at the U-19 Asian Championship in Thailand after organizers failed to play the sound in time.