SEOUL — American network NBC has apologised after one of its analysts drew anger for a comment during coverage of the Pyeongchang Olympics that seemed to gloss over South Korea’s painful history with Japan, its former colonial master.

The analyst, Mr Joshua Cooper Ramo, made the comment while appearing with Katie Couric and Mike Tirico during the opening ceremony last Friday (Feb 9). Noting that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan was in attendance, Mr Ramo described Japan as “a country which occupied Korea from 1910 to 1945, but every Korean will tell you that Japan is a cultural, technological and economic example that has been so important to their own transformation”.

The remark immediately ignited outrage in South Korea, the Olympic host nation, where resentment of Japan’s harsh early 20th-century annexation of the Korean Peninsula continues to simmer. Just last month, Mr Abe’s attendance at the games was in question after tensions escalated over Japan’s refusal to reissue an apology for the Japanese military’s role in forcing Korean and other women to work in military brothels during World War II.

Soon after Mr Ramo’s remark, an online petition began to circulate demanding an apology from NBC. By Sunday, more than 8,000 people had signed it.

“Any reasonable person familiar with the history of Japanese imperialism, and the atrocities it committed before and during WWII, would find such statement deeply hurtful and outrageous,” the petition 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.”

In a statement read on air by NBC anchor Carolyn Manno on Saturday, NBC said: “We understand the Korean people were insulted by these comments and we apologise.”

Critics also seized on other remarks made during the broadcast by Mr Ramo, who shared in both Peabody and Emmy awards for his work for NBC during the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing.

“NBC’s Olympics Asian Analyst Joshua Cooper Ramo says having the next three Olympics in Korea, Japan and China is an opportunity to experience all of the Asian cultures,’” one critic wrote on Twitter, asking NBC, “maybe next time hire an Asian Analyst that knows Asia has more than three cultures???”

Ms Maureen Ryan, Variety’s chief television critic, wrote in a review of NBC’s broadcast of the Olympic opening ceremony that “Ramo’s endless generalities about what constituted ‘Asian’ culture felt about as deep as a Wikipedia entry.”

In addition to his role as an occasional Olympic commentator at NBC, Mr Ramo is also co-chief executive of Kissinger Associates, an advisory firm founded by former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, and sits on the board of directors for Starbucks and FedEx.

Mr Ramo’s remarks appeared to reinforce growing concerns among some South Koreans that the United States was favouring its partnership with Japan over that of its other long-time ally in the region, South Korea.

“You might think that Americans would be antagonistic towards Japan because it bombed Pearl Harbour,” said one Korean-language user on Twitter, who used the pseudonym James Bond. “But in reality, that’s not the case. Korea as the US understands it is just a small appendage attached to eastern China.” NEW YORK TIMES