| Screenshot of NBC's 'Today' show |
By Jung Min-ho
"Today," a morning news program on NBC, has been mocked for displaying footage of Korean flags during a segment reporting on the death of Shinzo Abe, the former Japanese prime minister.
A reporter on the show told viewers Friday (local time) about the assassination of Abe, who was shot while making a campaign speech for the Liberal Democratic Party in Nara, ahead of Sunday's upper house elections.
"Gun violence is exceptionally rare in Japan," the reporter said amid footage of landmarks of Tokyo, such as Tokyo Tower and the Shibuya crossing.
When the screen started to show Korean flags hanging from flagpoles, the reporter continued, "Its gun laws are among the most stringent in the world."
The error, which immediately made headlines, has sparked criticism and ridicule online.
"The video shows how ignorant it has been about Asians," one person commented on Naver, the most-used search engine in Korea.
"NBC is known as a liberal media outlet … It says it respects diversity and global cooperation, but it cannot distinguish the Korean flag from the Japanese one," another Naver user wrote.
American journalist Curtis Houck was among the first who pointed out the mistake on Twitter.
"Ummmm, wrong country, TODAY show," Houck tweeted. "NBC News, your morning show has some issues with keeping the countries in Asia straight."
After the issue came to the fore, the Korean flags appear to have disappeared from the clip on the NBC website.
Abe, a well-known conservative politician who resigned as Japan's longest-serving prime minister in 2020 due to health reasons, was shot twice by Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, who blamed Abe's alleged ties to an unknown religious group for his mother's financial ruin. Abe later died at Nara Medical University Hospital.
This was not the first time the network had drawn negative reactions in Korea over its work. In 2018, former NBC Sports analyst Joshua Cooper Ramo was relieved from its PyeongChang Olympic coverage after enraging many Koreans with ignorant comments about the country. The network later apologized over the issue, saying it has "great respect and admiration for South Korea and its people."