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At their core, the Olympics are supposed to be about unifying the world through the power of sport.
The 2024 Summer Olympics have been…anything but that. From Russian athletes being banned, to Chinese swimmers being implicated in a doping scandal, and an Algerian boxer being intentionally misgendered in an apparent witch hunt, the Paris Games have been a colossal nightmare for international diplomacy.
But that all pales in comparison to a potential gaffe by the games’ organizers, who may have violated international sanctions with the content of their athlete swag bags.
In short, all athletes who compete in the Olympics are given complimentary gifts as a “thank you” of sorts for competing. The same type of thing happens in college football bowl games.
But according to the South Korean government, the 2024 Paris Olympics swag bag violated sanctions handed down against North Korea
Paris Olympics May Have Violated International Sanctions Against North Korea
As part of the bag, all athletes received a Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 smartphone. Samsung, of course, is a massive South Korean technology company.
According to the Associated Press, “South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said smartphones are among the items banned under Security Council Resolution 2397 passed in 2017, which prohibits the supply, sale or transfer to North Korea of ‘all industrial machinery.'”
The resolution does not limit the sanctions to North Korea’s government. South Korean officials clarified that smartphones would be banned however they entered the country.
But IOC officials say that the North Korean athletes did not receive the phone.
“We can confirm that the athletes of the National Olympic Committee of DPRK have not received the Samsung phones,” a spokesperson for the IOC said, according to Reuters.
Ironically, a similar incident occured at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. Officials offered North Korean athletes the opportunity to return phones before heading home. The North Korean athletes refused them entirely.