South Korea Continues Boycott Against Japan with Mixed Success
Cars and beer are taking the brunt of the boycott against Japanese products while other daily consumer Japanese products are actually expanding in South Korea:
![A "Boycott Japan" t-shirt is sold at a rally in Shinchon-dong, western Seoul, last August in retaliation to Japanese control measures imposed on key exports to Korea. [NEWS1]](https://i0.wp.com/koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2020/07/01/1fe291e8-a94f-4cff-b5b2-f8740b0b3ff9.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
The impact of a boycott movement against Japanese products that began in July 2019 is still visible in consumption patterns today, although some brands have shown signs of recovery.
The “No Japan” boycott began after Japan last year introduced controls on exports of some key products to Korea.
Consumer goods were the hardest hit. Japanese beer and cars, in particular, have seen sales drop dramatically, even as the boycott movement has waned in recent months. (……)However, there have been some signs that may suggest the impact is lessening. Japanese luxury brand Lexus saw sales increase in May with the sale of 727 cars, 266 more than April. The figure is still down on last year, when it sold 1,431 vehicles in May, but does show an upturn.
Joong Ang Ilbo
“Lexus’ sales are recovering due to the brand’s positive reputation for its quality among consumers and the recent boost in promotions,” said an official in the imported car industry.
Meanwhile, some Japanese consumer goods brands like Descente, a sportswear company, ABC Mart, a footwear brand, and Muji, a retail company, have been opening more stores in Korea and seeing sales increase. Industry analysts say consumers still shy away from products that are conspicuously Japanese, like cars and beer, but have been returning to Japanese brands for daily supplies and personal items.
You can read more at the link, but I have always found it interesting that the Korean government wants to boycott Japanese products while at the same time wants to reopen the near slave labor production facilities at the Kaesong Industrial Complex in North Korea to sell those goods to Koreans.
All my Korean friends are buying more Japanese things. They think this Japan bashing is stupid.
And yet no one says a word when emperor xi sticks his hand up in his commie moon pie puppet and has him say “let the infected chinese students back in to go to school.while half of them are really spies for the chicoms.” I hear similar things from the unions in the US. I pretty much ignored them too. Strangely no one in Europe goes through this boycott game or at least it hasn’t popped up on my radar. COVID changed travel to and from certain countries (cough US cough) but that’s it.
Messing with capitalism has been the downfall of many a leftist wannabee dictator.
But this quarrell is much more complex than your own convenient narrative.
This site is sounding more and more like the Japanese Netouyo Right Wing site, with one sided views, siding with Japan as the good guys. Instead of quoting a right wing newspaper that is widely discredited in South Korea, how about read what the Japanese media is saying about this trade fight that they themselves started, and how Japan is now getting clobbered by their own dumb actions?
“Korea Inc. ditches Japan chipmaking materials for homegrown supply”
https://tinyurl.com/yabasoyc
This is no different from how China threatened to cut off the supply of rare earth for Japan after they got in the naval altercation in South Pacific in 2010. Japan tried the same thing against South Korea a year ago, and Japan is now finding out what a backfire looks like. Instead of bringing down the South Korean economy to its knees as they intended, they’ve lost trade and business at a time when they were racking up huge trade surpluses with South Korea every year since 1965.
This is what a US professor at Stanford University who studied this case says.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u4CHW_bh3GM
And this is the non-biased middle of the road view without taking anybody’s sides.
The things Beijing Boy quotes tell a lot about his presuppositions. The Korean Government tried to renegotiate a treaty, a contract, if you will, that had been settled many years before. This was unethical. The Japanese decided to treat untrustworthy people as untrustworthy. So naturally, it’s all Tokyo’s fault. They should just let their trading partners be two-faced and behave as if everything is on the level.
Neither side is composed of angels. Both sides are as treacherous as wolves. But South Korean leaders are playing a very coolly-calculated game to slip the RoK from it’s moorings and alienate all allies so that there’s no place to go but China. Meanwhile, the Japanese are using the rift to snuggle in closer with Washington, Manila, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, and Canberra.
And anyone who claims they can’t see that is either mendacious or inattentive.
Nobody around here like mumbling double-talk. Even if it’s couched in terms that condescending. (source: setnaffa)
I’m not being condescending towards you, Beijing Boy. You’re carrying a torch for China, not my family.