SAPPORO – South Korea has joined China in asking the organizer of the Asian Winter Games to change the hotel for its athletes due to a controversial history book placed in its guest rooms, the organizer said Wednesday.
The Korean Sport & Olympic Committee asked the organizer to find other accommodation than the Apa Hotel in Sapporo’s Minami Ward, following similar requests from the Chinese Olympic Committee and the Olympic Council of Asia, which sanctions the Asian Games.
The Apa Hotel places in guest rooms a book that denies the 1937 Nanking Massacre as well as the “forced recruitment of comfort women,” or women procured for Japanese military brothels before and during World War II. Many comfort women were from the Korean Peninsula, which was under Japanese rule before and during the war.
