Both North Korea and South Korea marched together in the Parade of Nations at the Opening and Closing Ceremonies under the Unification Flag, a white flag showing the united Korean Peninsula in blue. They had two flagbearers carrying the flag together at each occasion, one representing the North and the other representing the South. The female athletes and staff wore red blazers, while their male counterparts wore blue. Although they marched together, the teams competed separately and had separate medal tallies.
Korea forms a peninsula that extends some 1,100 km from the Asian mainland, flanked by the Yellow Sea to the west and the East Sea/Sea of Japan (see Notice on Talk page) to the east, and terminated by the Korea Strait and the East China Sea to the south.
SouthKorea's capital and largest city is Seoul in the northwest, other major cities include nearby Incheon, central Daejeon, Gwangju in the southwest and Daegu and Busan in the southeast.
Korea's population is one of the most ethnically and linguistically homogenous in the world, with the only minority being a small Chinese community.
Athens was chosen as the host city in 1997, after surprisingly losing the bid to organize the 1996 SummerOlympics, the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the modern Olympic Games.
Since the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France it has been the tradition to have a mascot for the games and this year the official mascots are sister and brother, Athena and Phevos, named after the goddess of wisdom, strategy and war and the god of light and music, respectively.
Also recognized was the symbolic unified march of athletes from North Korea and SouthKorea under the Korean Unification Flag.
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