BBC Mistakes Taiwan Holiday Celebrations for North Korean Military Parade

The military honor guard performs during the National Day celebrations in Taipei, Taiwan,
AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying
Ben Kew

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) accidentally labeled footage of celebrations of Taiwan’s Double Ten National Day on Saturday as a North Korean military parade, multiple news outlets reported.

North Korea held a large-scale military parade on Saturday to mark the 75th anniversary of its ruling Workers’ Party, bizarrely choosing to have it take place in the pre-dawn hours of the day, rather than during daylight.

Taiwan also organized national celebrations on Saturday for a holiday known as Double Ten National Day, which commemorates the start of the 1911 Wuchang Uprising of October 10, 1911, (10-10 or double ten) that led to the dissolution of the imperial Qing Dynasty and the establishment of modern Taiwan.

While a BBC News anchor discussed the event in North Korea, where the communist regime unveiled an allegedly new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the broadcaster showed live images from Taiwan outside the Presidential Office in Taipei that were marked “Live: Pyongyang.”

​Several users immediately picked up the mistake and mocked the BBC over the error, noting the sizeable differences between democratically-run Taiwan and the world’s most repressive communist dictatorship.

“I wonder if people in the U.K. realise that a once reputable news service is now just an embarrassment,” wrote one unimpressed Twitter user.

The BBC has since reportedly apologized for its mistake.

The corporation, which is funded by the British taxpayer, has had to apologize several times in the recent past for on-air blunders. In April this year, a report from BBC Wales mistook Brighton Pavilion for a mosque, leading to a backlash from Muslim viewers.

In 2016, presenters on BBC Breakfast told viewers of their upcoming interview with Scottish National Party Nicola Sturgeon, but instead showed footage of a gorilla named Kumbuka, who had escaped from his enclosure at London Zoo before being recaptured.

In 2013, presenter Simon McCoy picked up a stack of printing paper instead of his iPad for an on-air presentation about drunkenness and alcoholism, leading to speculation he himself was inebriated. The BBC later claimed he was under pressure and chose to embrace his error once he had made the mistake.

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