Korea Responds to Award Ceremony Sign

On February 2, the Chinese government said that it “did not want to interpret the athletic ceremony in a political context” in response to the resistance to its “Mount Baekdu Ceremony” at the award ceremony of the Changchun Asian Winter Games.

Prior to that, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned a related official at the Korean Embassy in China on February 1, expressing an official complaint after Korean short-track athletes held a sign up saying “Mount Baekdu is Korea’s Territory” after winning a silver medal at the award ceremony of the Changchun Asian Winter Games on January 31.

A Korean government official said, “Via a foreign relations channel to the Chinese government, I expressed my opinion that this incident occurred by accident, it should not be interpreted with political strings attached, and China needs to respond calmly to this.’”

He said, “China would not want this to affect the Korea-China relations nor the Asian Winter Games,” adding, “Hopefully, China will react to it with full consideration of the attitude of Korea.”

gun43@donga.com