It's not time to fight, but to cooperate

• Published date: 08 March 2023
• Publication title: The Korea Times

It is common for neighbors to have conflicts in any region. Last year, Russia invaded Ukraine. To Korea, neighboring Japan was the Russia of its past. Imperial Japan was once the invader who trampled on the freedom and spirit of the Korean people. This historical fact does not change over time.

However, the results of a recent poll have caught my attention. On Feb. 27, the Federation of Korean Industries surveyed 626 young people on their perceptions of Korea-Japan relations, and 71 percent of the respondents said that Korea needs to improve its bilateral relations with Japan. Of them, 73.1 percent in their 20s and 68.7 percent in their 30s answered so, indicating that the younger a Korean person is, the stronger that person's demand for improving Korea-Japan relations.

As background, economic reasons were cited first. Of the respondents, 45.4 percent answered that the bilateral relationship needs to be improved because of "expanding mutual economic benefits through cooperation between the two countries." Subsequently, 18.2 percent of respondents said that bilateral relations should be improved to "check China's rise through cooperation."

As for the younger generation's impression of Japan, the positive perception was 2.4 times higher than negative; respondents with a positive impression of Japan accounted for 42.3 percent of the total poll, far exceeding negative impressions at 17.4 percent. Some may say that the results of this poll cannot be trusted. Those critics may disparage the result, saying that the poll has less than 1,000 respondents, which is not that big, and that the Federation of Korean Industries, an association of businesses and not some other organization, conducted the poll.

But those who say this need to see the whole picture. About 565,000 Korean tourists visited Japan during the month of January 2023 alone, which was an increase of 108,900 compared to the previous December, as well as a 72.5 percent recovery rate compared to the same month in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic. This rising trend is thanks to the Korean MZ generation who are in their 20s and 30s. Forty-eight percent of Korean tourists to Japan belong to this generation.

A similar phenomenon is also observed in Japan. According to the results of a Japan Tourism Agency survey of 400 Japanese men and women of Generation Z, 36.5 percent said South Korea was the number one destination Japanese young women wanted to visit this year. This figure surpassed France at 33.5 percent...