A poll taken by MBC revealed that Korean sentiment toward Japan is the worst it has been in the last 10 years, reported Yonhap News (Korean).
To mark the 60th anniversary of Liberation and 40th anniversary of the normalization of ties between Seoul and Tokyo, an MBC production team conducted a survey of Koreans and Japanese to get an idea of their opinion of one another and of bilateral ties.
79.3 percent of Koreans expressed negative feelings about Japanese. Asked if they felt a sense of closeness with Japanese, 53.8 percent of Koreans responded that they don’t feel particularly close to their neighbors across the East Sea, while 25.5 percent said they don’t feel close to them at all. Only 17.9 percent of respondents gave favorable answers.
About Seoul-Tokyo ties, 47.6 percent of Koreans said things were “somewhat bad,” and 7.9 percent said things were “very bad.” 8.7 percent said relations were good, while 34.7 percent responded in a neutral way.
Japanese also evaluated bilateral ties poorly, with 41.6 percent saying the relationship wasn’t good. 19.6 percent said the relationship was good, and 28.4 responded in a neutral way.
As for why they felt little affinity for the Japanese, 87.4 percent of Koreans cited territorial issues like Dokdo, 78.2 percent cited differences in historical understanding, and 66.4 percent cited anti-Korean feeling in Japan.
66.8 percent of Japanese cited anti-Japanese feeling in Korea, 45.1 percent cited territorial issues like Dokdo and 43.6 percent cited differences in historical understanding.
As for what needed to be done to improve the Korea-Japan relationship, 48.1 percent of Koreans said Japan needed to offer a sincere apology for its past.
Meanwhile, as for anticipated threats to national security, 36.4 percent of Koreans cited North Korea, followed by Japan (22.0 percent), the United States (20.1 percent) and China (10.8 percent). Japanese respondents cited North Korea (64.6 percent), followed by the United States (10.8 percent), “none in particular” (9.3 percent) and China (8.1 percent). Marmot’s note: I found the Japanese responses quite surprising, especially concerning China.
As for the nation with which they needed to get along closer, 33.7 percent of Koreans cited the United States, followed by North Korea (29.8 percent), China (21.1 percent) and Japan (4.3 percent). Japanese cited the United States (40.6 percent), “none in particular” (19.8 percent), China (17.6 percent) and [South] Korea (8.0 percent).
As for which Korean entertainer Japanese liked best, Choi Ji-woo placed first with 11.0 percent, followed by Bae Yong-joon (6.7 percent), BoA (5.4 percent), Lee Byeong-heon (3.9 percent) and Won Bin (2.2 percent). When given a chance to cite their three favorite Korean stars, Choi still placed first with 31.5 percent support.
In Korea, the poll was conducted by Gallup Korea between July 11 and July 25 through interviews with 1,510 men and women over the age of 20. In Japan, the Japan Research Center conducted self-administered questionnaires on 1,114 men and women over the age of 20 between June 6 and June 13. The margin of error was 2.5 percent in Korea and 2.9 percent in Japan.
The results of the survey will be broadcast in Korea during the 3:00 p.m. broadcast of “Making Peace Together” on August 15.
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9 Comments
curious:
Tell me about this “Japan Research Centre”. Japan Research Center for Technology and Innovation? Japan Research Center at Shanghai Fudan Univresity? Could it be Japan Research Center at MBC, maybe?
We sacrificed quite a bit to have sex with Japanese women. I didn’t realize the “Koreans” had a beef. Ain’t it enough that they’re Korean and not Japanese?
yeah!!!!!!!
Marmot wrote,
“Japanese respondents cited North Korea (64.6 percent), followed by the United States (10.8 percent), ‘none in particular’ (9.3 percent) and China (8.1 percent). Marmot??s note: I found the Japanese responses quite surprising, especially concerning China.”
That is surprising. Given that the usual Korea-bashers on this blog complain (understandably, I’ll admit) about Koreans fearing the US more than China, it’s interesting that evidently, the same is true in Japan!
(Although from a statistician’s point of view, this is nullified by the margin of error, because the numbers for the US and China are within 2.9% of each other….)
…Actually, the whole issue of seeing the US as more of a security threat than Chinain both countries, evidentlyis perplexing. The former country has had a presence in South Korea and Japan since the end of the Second World War, but since the end of the postwar miliary administrations, has never exercised its presence in the way that a minority of South Koreans and Japanese apparently fear. China, on the other hand, has very much made its presence felt in Hong Kong, continues to flex its muscles over Taiwan, and kicked up a storm in Korea last year with the whole Kogury issue.
(Odd how the Communist Mainland and Nationalist Taiwanese governments somehow managed to more or less peacefully coexist, as long as the KMT on the island continued to maintain that they were the legitimate government over all of China, while Beijing now cannot bear the idea of Taiwanese independence, even though Taiwan has been a de facto separate country since 1949.)
That a somewhat sizable minority of Japanese (11%) and Koreans (20%) see the United States as the greatest threat is not all that perplexing, nor do I find it particularly troubling.
Except for dyed-in-the-wall US haters (which would include leftist groups in South Korea that see the US as the true aggressor in the Korean War), most of this phenomenon is directly attributable to the synergy of how and why the Iraq War was started and Bush’s barrage of belligerent rhetoric (compared with his predecessors’ rhetoric) against North Korea.
Whether one supports Bush’s actions or not, the fact is that a sizable portion of the world, including a lot of voters in our democratic allies, saw the Iraq War as a foregone conclusion based on a false pretext; the democracy we have promised is flimsy at best and the country has largely been turned into a war zone. That same president’s rhetoric seems to indicate that he has a willingness to go and do the same in North Korea, maybe before all the evidence is in, or on trumped-up evidence like with Iraq. If that happens, these people believe, their lives in South Korea and Japan are in danger.
North Korea is not about to attack, China is not about to attack, but Bush’s actions and rhetoric indicate he really might. Therefore, to them, the United States is the greatest danger to security.
I’m not saying I support this view, just that this view is out there and it’s not at all irrational, given the evidence before us. That tens of millions of voters in America’s democratic allies South Korea and Japan (even more if we count Canada, Western Europe, Australia, etc.) is one of the costs of the war which we may end up paying for heavily down the road.
But the good news is that this so-called “United States threat” is heavily tied to Bush. It will not necessarily automatically carry over to a different administration, even a Republican one (unless it is seen as very closely tied with the current one). If a North Korean deal is reached, and especially if the issue of human rights in North Korea becomes a key theme (and it’s seen as credible), then this could change even with Bush in office (though I think that is highly optimistic).
These are mere statistics, and like IQ tests, a few numbers do not provide the whole picture. In some sense I’m glad that 11% of Japanese feel the same way that 20% of the South Koreans do, because it makes this point much clearer.
It’s not surprising to me. This survey is conducted sololy by MBC, the Korean agency, right?
China 8.1%?? That’s absolute impossible!
According to a similar poll conducted by the Japanese Chu-Nichi Newspaper (2005 Aug), North Korea topped with 38%, followed by China with a “very slim margin”. (source)
They probably made a fuck up in some way, choosing respondants at China-towns or something.
China 8.1% is totally unthinkable.
Apollo:
Actually, Marmot’s posting says the Japan Research Centre conducted the Japanese survey.
Two interesting graphs based on polls conducted by the Japanese government (in Japanese).
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