Unification Flag Under Controversy

The much-debated ‘Hanbando’ flag, or the ‘Unification Flag’ as known to the world, was first used in 1991 in the 41st World Table Tennis Championship in Chiba, Japan, where South Korea and North Korea participated as a single team. The Flag has a blue silhouette of the Korean peninsula including Jeju Island, and with or without the Liancourt Rocks, known as Dokdo to Koreans and Takeshima to Japanese. Having no official status, the Hanbando flag has been used in international sporting events, including the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics, the 2002 Busan Asian Games, the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics, the 2006 Torino Winter Olympics, and the 2006 Doha Asian Games. From the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics the Hanbando flag was not used, reflecting the growing political conflicts surrounding the Korean peninsula, but it is to be used again in the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics. Not everybody welcomes the unification flag, though. Protesters burn the Hanbando flag along with the North Korean flag.