What I meant was that if you talk to average people on the ground about a lot of this, you often get a VERY different impression than if you read some of the press, the blogs, and a few of the Korean-language websites.

I find myself getting a huge disparity when I go up and randomly choose someone to talk about some issue compared to when someone comes up to me wanting to share their opinion (the former is usually less emotional, better thought-out, and/or neutral or undecided, while the latter is more agenda-oriented, emotional, and often racist and/or nationalistic).

But you being over there and not over here, you can’t always get the benefit of that. There’s a lot less anti-American and anti-Japanese sentiment than you might think. There’s also a lot more distrust than you might think. Just the other day, a young man (education major at a major school) was telling me how he supported his sociology (?) professor’s idea that Korea, Japan, Mongolia, and Taiwan create a ??°?????­ (a federated country of sorts) to counter Chinese influence. In my classes where the students are mostly Korean, I get an overwhelmingly negative response about Koizumi but from the same people an overwhelmingly positive response about Japan. This kind of nuance can’t always be picked up in an article about people cutting their fingers off.

What is scary (to me) is how often something I have sensed about the peninsula is confirmed here at the time or even much later, by someone like you with first hand experience as a visitor, or expat resident, or personal ties to ROK (ethnic background or marriage). So I give myself credit for some discernment in these matters, hopefully no more than I deserve though.

For the most part, despite the noise about Tokto (which you would know was not a universal chorus if you were here and asking people about it, not just talking with those here who sought to tell you their opinion), runs contrary to the general trend in mainstream media, where Japanese movies and Japanese TV series are being shown with greater and greater frequency. ROK views of Japanese people (not of Koizumi) in “dramatic” pop culture, at least, are more and more “normal.”

One of the biggest reasons, I believe, behind certain groups’ opposition to the opening of Japanese pop culture in Korea was that it would be harder and harder to demonize Japan as a whole. The emotional reaction to Tokto notwitstanding (which many Westerners in Korea cannot understand because they never get emotional about any issue), Koreans have a much more “normal” view of Japan (even a postive one) as a people than before.

?€œWhat is happening in the popular culture in ROK, the movies, the cartoons, the jokes, could lead to more demonization of the Japanese leadership and system.?€?

Ok, a little creative transposition of terms and selective editing here. Now somebody give my phoney quote some substance by citing current ROK movies, cartoons, jokes that support it.

Even better, there’s got to be some new video games that are hits with ROK gamer fanatics. How about one that has brave ROK machine gunners shooting down wave after wave of fanatical Japanese Marines trying to storm ashore on Dokdo?

Kids are fickle; Korean kids just take a little longer to grow out of their fickleness.