The findings from this recent poll are especially troubling when you consider that last year a different poll found that 78% of South Koreans said they trusted Kim Jong-un. It would be interesting though if someone polled these two questions together to the Korean public. However, such polling numbers may seem to make no sense that Koreans would trust the leader of country committed to their destruction over a country that has no hostile intentions towards them, but for anyone that has followed Korea and Japan issues it makes perfect sense:
Three-quarters of Japanese do not trust their South Korean neighbours – and the feeling is mutual, a study has found.
A record 74 per cent of Japanese were now distrustful of South Koreans, found the study by the Yomiuri Shimbunin Japan
and the Hankook Ilbo in Korea. That was more than at any time since the study was first conducted in 1996 and well above last year’s figure of 60 per cent. Meanwhile, 75 per cent of South Koreans
had no trust in the Japanese, down from 79 per cent last year.
Those personal sentiments appeared to mirror a strained diplomatic relationship between the two countries. Some 83 per cent of Japanese respondents thought bilateral relations were bad, up from 63 per cent last year, while 82 per cent of Koreans thought the same, up from 69 per cent last year.
South China Morning Post
You can read much more at the link, but the reasons for the distrust are the usual ones, the Japanese did not apologize enough for World War II and the Japanese say they are tired of apologizing over and over again. Then there is always the Dokdo craziness.
As I have long said there is no reason for the South Korean political left to give up their anti-Japanese stance. It is even hard for the South Korean right to do so, though the prior President Park Geun-hye tried and the current government scrapped the deal she made with Japan. The issue is too great of punching bag for politicians to turn to when they need to deflect attention from domestic issues. How many times have we seen a Korean politician under domestic pressure show up on Dokdo?
This is all why I have long believed that if Japanese Prime Minister Abe was really clever he should apologize for war time sexual slavery once again, but this time in a large public speech to draw maximum media attention. During this speech then announce that Japan to atone for its past sins would become a champion of women’s rights beginning with the plight of modern day sexual slavery of North Korean women in China that both the South Korean and Chinese governments choose to ignore.
North Korean women trafficked in the sex industry in China are the modern day comfort women that the Chinese and South Koreans do nothing to stop. Japan becoming an advocate for these women would expose the current hypocrisy of their critics on this issue.
Such a stance would make it difficult for the political demagogues in South Korean to bring up more demands for apologies when it would reflect negatively on their own current human rights failures. It would no doubt be a bold measure, but I see no other way of ending the current impasse.
