Samsung Olympic Swag Bags May Accidentally Violate International Sanctions

A free gift to Olympic athletes may have international fallout.

Every athlete in the Olympics was set to receive a free Samsung phone. But South Korean officials said Thursday that the swag for North Korean athletes would violate 2017 sanctions against the country for its nuclear program. 

The International Olympic Committee later claimed the North Korean athletes never received the phones.

“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.

Samsung, a South Korea–based company, is an official Olympic sponsor.

North Korea sent 16 athletes to Paris to compete across seven sports, including table tennis and wrestling, after sitting out the Tokyo Games, which took place in 2021, due to the country’s self-imposed lockdown to combat COVID-19. As a result, the IOC banned the country from competing in the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing. 

It’s not clear where the phones that were supposed to go to the North Korean athletes are now, according to the Associated Press.

In 2017, the UN Security Council passed a resolution that prohibited the supply, sale, or transfer of “all industrial machinery” to North Korea. 

The same issue arose during the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics in South Korea. Local organizers dangled the phones then, with the offer that the North Koreans could return them before heading home; the athletes refused them entirely.