[Yonhap News Photo]
Winter Asiad organizers have agreed to switch a hotel for South Korean athletes, bowing to their protest at guest room books denying and whitewashing Japan's wartime atrocities and sex slavery.
The athletes will not stay at APA Hotel and Resort during the Asian Winter Games from February 19 to 26 in Sapporo on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, the Korean Sport and Olympic Committee said Tuesday.
The committee said it received a notice from Japanese officials late Monday.
Seoul and Beijing have lodged a protest with the Olympic Council of Asia, the governing body of sports in Asia, and Games organizers because guest room books provided by APA denied or played down Japan's forced recruitment of World War II sex slaves and the 1937 Nanjing Massacre.
Seoul and Tokyo are locked in a diplomatic row reignited by the construction of "comfort woman" statues symbolizing the plight of Asian women sexually enslaved by Japan's imperial army during World War II. Japan thinks they expose embarrassing historical facts.
Historians estimate that up to 200,000 women mostly from Korea were forced to work in front-line brothels for Japanese troops. Many South Koreans still harbor deep resentment against Japan over its 1910-45 colonial rule, and they want Tokyo's sincere apology.
Seoul and Tokyo reached a landmark deal in 2015 to resolve the emotional "comfort woman" issue after Japan agreed to donate one billion yen ($9.97 million) to a foundation dedicated to supporting the victims of sexual slavery.
In return, Tokyo wants Seoul to tear down the "comfort woman" statues set up outside Japanese legations in Seoul and the southern port city of Busan.
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