An apology was not enough for NBC, which fired one of its Olympic analysts after his comments about Japan angered Koreans.
Joshua Cooper Ramo, who is co-CEO of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s consulting firm as well as a board member of Starbucks and FedEx, remarked that South Korea is grateful for Japan’s role in its economic development, which remains a sore spot because of the brutality of Japan’s occupation from 1910-45. Among other things, Japan’s army enslaved Korean females as “comfort women” during that time.
“Every Korean will tell you that Japan is a cultural, technological and economic example that has been so important to their own transformation,” Ramo said during the Opening Ceremonies of the Pyeongchang Games on Friday.
Every Korean actually did not say that and thousands signed a petition demanding that NBC apologize. “Any reasonable person familiar with the history of Japanese imperialism, and the atrocities it committed before and during World War II, would find such statement deeply hurtful and outrageous,” it read. “And no, no South Korean would attribute the rapid growth and transformation of its economy, technology, and political/cultural development to the Japanese imperialism.”