An extraordinary row has broken out at the Olympics after Japan vowed to keep flying its controversial Rising Sun flag – despite South Korea demanding it be taken down after they were forced to remove a banner referring to the 16th-century war between the two neighbours.
South Korea’s Olympic committee were forced to remove banners at the athlete’s village in Tokyo after the International Olympic Committee ruled they were provocative.
In agreeing to take down the banners, South Korea’s committee claimed the IOC promised displaying the Japanese Rising Sun flag would also be banned at stadiums and other Olympic venues.
The flag, portraying a red sun with 16 rays extending outward, is resented by many people in South Korea and other parts of Asia who see it as a symbol of Japan’s wartime past.
But South Korean media later reported that some activists carried the rising sun flag near the athletes’ village and media reports said Japan’s organising committee ruled the flag would not be banned inside Olympic stadiums.
The South Korean banners, which drew protests from some Japanese far-right groups, had been hung at the balconies of South Korean athletes’ rooms and collectively spelled out a message that read: ‘I still have the support of 50 million Korean people.’
This borrowed from the famous words of 16th-century Korean naval admiral Yi Sun-sin, who according to historical lore told King Seonjo of Korea’s Joseon Kingdom ‘I still have 12 battleships left’ before pulling off a crucial victory against a larger Japanese fleet during the 1592-1598 Japanese invasions of Korea.
The IOC said the banners invoked images of war and went against Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter, which says ‘no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.’
The committee said it agreed to remove the banners after the IOC promised to also apply the same rules to the rising sun flags and ban them at all Olympic venues.
‘Under the agreement, the committee will not raise any further debate to allow athletes to fully focus on competition, while the IOC will ban the displaying of the rising sun flag at all Olympic venues so that no political problems would arise,’ the South Korean committee said in a statement.
Toshiro Muto, the CEO of Tokyo’s organising committee, said the IOC thought the South Korean banners were ‘not appropriate’ and asked them to be taken down.
Committee President Seiko Hashimoto acknowledged there ‘may be many ways of thinking’ over the issue.
‘If the message is regarded as political, it goes against the message of the Olympics and the Paralympics to bring the world together as one,’ she said.
The Japanese officials made no comments about the South Korean announcement that the IOC had banned rising sun flag at the Games.
‘It would be inappropriate to ban the flag from naval exchanges because a version is used by the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Forces,’ Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said.
‘However, you would not expect the Tokyo Olympics hosts or Japanese athletes to use the rising sun emblem because it is not the national flag.’