Korea PR activist Prof. Seo Kyung-deok plans to launch a public campaign to boycott a controversial Japanese hotel that kept ultranationalist publications at its guestrooms.  

Seoul-based Yonhap News Agency reported that Seo, a professor of Sungshin Women’s University, revealed on Thursday his plan against the APA Hotel and Resort located in Sapporo, Hokkaido.

Seo said unlike China’s government-led campaign, South Korea will boycott the hotel in a private campaign with the help of citizens and tourist agencies.

The APA hotel chain, which has 413 hotels and resorts and over 70-thousand rooms across Japan, recently became the center of strong protests from South Korea and China as it became known that rooms at the hotel in Sapporo contained books denying Japan’s wartime sexual slavery and the 1937 Nanjing Massacre.

The books were written by the hotel’s CEO Toshio Motoya.

Seo said apart from the campaign, he will also compile a list of other companies showing ultranationalist tendencies and unveil them online.

Meanwhile, the organizing committee of the Sapporo Winter Asian Games slated for later this month was known to have granted a request by the Korean Sport and Olympic Committee(KSOC) to change the accommodation for South Korean athletes from the APA Hotel and Resort to another facility within Hokkaido.