South Korean hotels pushing for licenses for gambling machines and steam baths threw down the gauntlet to the government, threatening to reject foreigners during next year's World Cup.
A draft resolution which is likely to be passed at a meeting of 486 tourist hotels across the country on Monday, urged the government to give them the licenses or face a boycott of the world's largest sporting event.
"We hereby declare that we will scrap the accommodation contract related to the World Cup and will not accept bookings by foreigners until the government meets our demands," the draft resolution obtained by AFP said.
The tourist hotels have reached an agreement with football's world governing body FIFA to provide 22,000 rooms from May 26 till July 3 for the World Cup, which would accommodate players and FIFA officials as well.
The hotels also threatened to give up their business licenses and shut down.
But other hotel sources said the tourist hotels were divided between hawks and doves on their future course of action.
"To boycott foreign guests during the World Cup is not an idea shared by all tourist hotels. This kind of extremism is not desirable at all. We need to continue to have dialogue with government authorities to find a reasonable way out," a tourist hotel official said.
President Yoon Min-Ha of Hotel Koreana in the southern city of Kwangju said most tourist hotels in South Korea were suffering from serious financial difficulties after the government outlawed slot machines and steam baths.
The government banned the one-armed bandits in 1994 following a massive corruption scandal surrounding licenses for the then highly popular machines. Steam baths, which were often used for prostitution, were made illegal in 1998.
Over the past four years, some 150 tourist hotels are estimated to have shut down, changed hands or suspended operation across the country.
"We have repeatedly appealed to tourism authorities to allow us to operate slot machines and steam baths as in the past but our request fell on deaf ears," Yoon told AFP by phone from Kwangju.
Representatives of tourist hotels have rallied in major World Cup-hosting provincial cities including Pusan, Taegu, Taejon, Inchon, Kwangju and Taigu and largely endorsed the resolution, he said.
Officials of the Culture Tourism Ministry said the issue required "careful consideration" by all government agencies concerned.
South Korea, which will co-host the World Cup finals next year with its neighbour Japan, has prepared a total of some 125,000 rooms for visitors.
The Korea World Cup Organizing Committee (KOWOC) said the capacity was enough to accommodate the estimated 75,000 soccer fans and tourists expected daily during the games.
KOWOC statistics showed medium- and low-price inns will supply 102,000 rooms, 82 percent of the total, while tourist hotels will furnish another 22,357 rooms -- AFP
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