The commentator who offended locals during coverage of the Pyeongchang Olympics opening ceremony by straying into the sensitive issue of Japan-South Korean relations, has been taken off the air, U.S. broadcaster NBC said on Monday.

'Joshua Cooper Ramo has completed his responsibilities for NBC in Pyeongchang, and will have no further role on our air,' an NBC spokesman said in an email to Reuters.

Former journalist Ramo, working as an analyst for NBC, said on-air during the Pyeongchang Games opening ceremony that all Koreans recognized that Japan had served as an important example in South Korea's own economic transformation.

Koreans around the world criticized his remarks and a petition soon circulated online. His insensitive comment sparked a storm of complaints from Koreans on social media.

Joshua Ramo (pictured) said on-air during the Pyeongchang Games opening ceremony that all Koreans recognized that Japan had served as an important example in South Korea's own economic transformation

Joshua Cooper Ramo is pictured at the Pyeongchang Games, however he has now been taken off air

Japan, which colonized the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945, has left a deep legacy of mistrust and ill-feeling in South Korea.

'Hey NBC, you forgot the Olympics were in Korea?' a South Korean Twitter user wrote.

'Joshua Cooper Ramo should not speak for Koreans and obviously doesn't know any Koreans either. Nobody will tell you we are thankful for Japan occupation and they are not an example.'

Ramo, who has written books on China and is a director of Starbucks Corp and FedEx Corp, said as athletes paraded into the Games stadium that 'every Korean will tell you that Japan is a cultural, technological and economic example that has been so important to their own transformation'.

NBC apologized to South Korea's winter Games organizing committee on Sunday.

An NBC spokesman said: 'We apologized quickly both in writing and on television for a remark made by one of our presenters during Friday night's opening ceremony.

'We're very gratified that Pyeongchang's organizing committee has accepted that apology.'

The organizing committee could not immediately be reached for comment.

North Korean cheerleaders wave flags showing a unified Korean peninsula at the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics

Ramo, who was also an on-air contributor for NBC during the Beijing Olympics, is co-CEO of Kissinger Associates, an advisory firm of former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

NBC, a unit of Comcast Corp, is the exclusive U.S. broadcaster of the Olympics and is producing more than 2,400 hours of coverage over 18 days from Pyeongchang.

Japanese colonial rule was a deeply ambivalent experience for Koreans.

Korea under Japanese rule began with the end of the short-lived Korean Empire in 1910 and ended at the conclusion of World War II in 1945.

During this time the term 'comfort women' was conceived, whereby women and girls were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army.

Soldiers forced more than 200,000 women into sex slavery prior to and during World War II.

Japan established a broad network of 'comfort stations' throughout its occupied territories, where 'comfort women' were trafficked and used as sexual slaves.

The majority of these women were barely teenagers when they were enslaved.