I had to play rugby at high school – running up and down the field shirtless, being hurled to the frost-frozen ground by massive low-IQ brutes. It taught you to brush off trivial slights. But in Hong Kong, where we accept worker deaths with a stiff upper lip, hurt and humiliation from the South Korean sevens tournament Anthem-Gate outrage continues.
It seems a ‘junior staff’ up in Hermit Kingdom googled ‘Hong Kong anthem’ and used the – indisputably anthemic – protest song. Whoops.
HK Rugby Union, Asia Rugby and The Sports Federation & Olympic Committee of Hong Kong, China all join the mass panty-wetting. Lawmakers too. A whole litany of mouth-frothing here, in which: Starry Lee wants an apology to the Chinese nation; Junius Ho demands that the Hong Kong Rugby team be disbanded (for not reacting with appropriate horror when Glory was played); other legislators and pro-Beijing groups insist on a diplomatic confrontation with Seoul, suggest suspension of rugby sponsorship by HSBC, and march on the Korean consulate. The Standard story adds that the Chief Secretary has complained to the Korean consul, while all-seeing Ronny Tong says the choice of tune was ‘definitely not unintentional’. And the government orders the police Organised Crime and Triad Bureau to…
…look into the matter to investigate any breaches of the National Anthem Ordinance or any other legislation of Hong Kong, including the Hong Kong National Security Law.
(The hoo-ha occurred in Incheon.)
For my part, I will not start my next batch of kimchi until next week (waiting for weather to cool a bit, anyway.)
The Standard editorial reminds us that a Kuwait sports event once accidentally played a mock Kazakhstan national anthem from the movie Borat.
I want Odious Whore and a gaggle of his Legco cohorts to indeed disband the HK rugby team and stand in place of the players instead, for the rest of the season.
That’ll show those ROKers!
South Korea the Hermit Kingdom?
The entire peninsula was known as “The Hermit Kingdom” long before there were two Koreas.
Perhaps if The PRC could muster seven half decent players out of a population of 900m males, then they could have their own anthem played if they ever won anything?
One could feign surprise that the true patriots aren’t calling for all Hong Kong teams to be disbanded vis-a-vis representing Hongkers at international competitions against opposing national teams.
Sorry to go off subject, but I wondered if that crypto-finance nut-job who used to loiter around here had any thoughts on SBF and FTX etc.? I am hoping that he (I very much doubt that a woman could be that daft) could provide us with some free entertainment for the next day or two.
All those demands from mediocre people.
@Mjrelje: That’s the biggest problem. Seven entitled, spoiled, princelings work together towards one cause for the greater good and put aside personal profit or glory? Never gonna happen. It’s why the PRC’s best team sports successes have always come from the women.
…Shirely all that rugger puts hairs on your chest ? (cf. The Jam. )