August 07, 2008	Thursday	Sha’aban 4, 1429

SEOUL, Aug 6: A South Korean TV station that irked the Chinese Olympic Games organisers by broadcasting unauthorised footage of a rehearsal for the opening ceremony has been banned from covering Friday’s event.

“Our staff are not allowed to go in with cameras and shoot the opening ceremony,” a spokeswoman at the private SBS network said on Wednesday. “But we can still broadcast the event through the pool coverage provided by the Beijing Olympic Broadcasting.”

Olympic organisers, who have made great efforts to keep the content of the ceremony as secret, slammed the broadcast by SBS, which on July 31 aired just over a minute of video of the closed-doors rehearsal.

SBS said its crew thought the part of the rehearsal they filmed was open for coverage and that no-one tried to stop them as they shot pictures.

“We did not mean to harm anyone by covering this. We didn’t do it secretly,” the spokeswoman said.

But the broadcast drew condemnation from many Chinese, with some Internet users even calling for a boycott of Korean goods.

More than 10,000 performers are involved in the ceremony, directed by Oscar nominee Zhang Yimou, according to the Chinese state media.—Reuters