The Korean Sport and Olympic Committee(KSOC) has asked Japan to change the accommodation for South Korean athletes participating in the Sapporo Winter Asian Games slated for later this month.
The KSOC said Wednesday that it sent two letters to event organizers on Tuesday, requesting the South Korean athletes’ lodging facility be changed from the APA Hotel and Resort to another location. It is now said to be waiting for a reply from Japan.
The APA Hotel and Resort recently became the center of strong protests from South Korea and China, as it became known that guest rooms at the hotel contained books denying Japan’s wartime sexual slavery and the 1937 Nanjing Massacre.
Late last month, Japan positively responded to the KSOC’s request to remove the books from the rooms. But the South Korean sports governing body has now decided to ask that its athletes be placed at another place altogether, as China did.
The Sapporo Winter Asian Games will run from February 19th through the 26th. The APA Hotel was chosen to accommodate some two-thousand athletes during the event.