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Hwang Dae-heon, of South Korea’s short track speedskating team, races during the men’s 1000-meter semifinal on Monday. (Yonhap News)

The Korean Sport & Olympic Committee will be taking a firm stand against the controversial referee calls that disqualified two South Korean athletes from a men’s short track speedskating event on Monday.

The committee announced in a press release Tuesday that it would be holding an emergency press conference Tuesday morning regarding the “unfair refereeing decisions made during the men’s 1000-meter short track speedskating semifinals” the day earlier.

The committee said it would be filing an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) regarding the disqualification of its skaters. The committee noted that it hoped by formally and openly lodging a complaint, it would “prevent South Korean athletes from being subjected to mistreatment in international ice sports and the sports world at large.”

During the men’s 1,000-meter short track speedskating semifinals held Monday, South Korean athletes Hwang Dae-heon and Lee June-seo crossed the finish line first and second, respectively, but were disqualified for lane change penalties. During the finals for the same event, a Hungarian athlete finished the race first but was also subsequently disqualified, resulting in gold and silver medals for China.

The KSOC explained that its decision to appeal came after considerations of the efforts by South Korean athletes, the uproar from Koreans in response to the penalty calls, and the “consensus that the referee’s decision will not be supported by the international sports world,” as well as citing what it called “unfair and opaque relationships between international sports alliances and international referees.”

Previously, the South Korean Olympic team strongly protested the disqualifications to the chief referee of the race immediately following the semifinals and also filed a letter of appeal to both the International Skating Union and the International Olympic Committee.

The last time South Korea filed an appeal with the CAS during the Olympic Games was in 2004, during the Athens Summer Olympics. At the time, South Korean male gymnast Yang Tae-young came just short of the gold in the individual all-around when judges mistakenly docked 0.1 of a point from his parallel bar routine score. The CAS denied the appeal, saying that the results of a judging error caused by the judges’ mistake cannot be overturned.

By Kim Yang-hee, staff reporter

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