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South Korean students flock to Japan
- hardmaru 7y ago“They have experienced military service and are disciplined,” said an official at a manufacturer in Aichi Prefecture. “They are good to work with, because they respect their superiors and are diligent.”
- GuiA 7y agoSimilar phenomenon in Silicon Valley with Israeli engineers.
- tehlike 7y agoI find israelis pleasant to work with, mostly because i think they are smart, and they have a good idea what they are doing. They also want to improve constantly. Also they speak their mind, no bs. We need more people with this mindset.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoI don't get the "as birthrate sinks and unemployment climbs". It's not like Japan is doing well there. And Japan is infamous for its incredibly negative attitude towards Koreans...
- baolongtrann 7y agoHave to admit I am clueless about the history between these two. Why don't they like each other?
- czr 7y agoYou may be interested in: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Japanese_sentiment_in_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Japanese_sentiment_in_Kor... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_under_Japanese_rule#Legacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_under_Japanese_rule#Lega... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Korean_sentiment#In_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Korean_sentiment#In_Japan
- thaumasiotes 7y agoA little older, but it's worth checking out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_invasions_of_Korea_(1592%E2%80%931598) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_invasions_of_Korea_(1... too.
- TheOperator 7y agoWell there was the whole Japan making Korean women into their sex slaves during WWII thing.
- nreilly 7y agoWith the euphemism 'Comfort Women'.
- docdeek 7y agoWikipedia has a short page on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Japan–Korea_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Japan–Korea_relatio...
- theaustinseven 7y agoJapan invaded the Korean peninsula as well as a sizeable portion of China and enacted horribly cruel war crimes against the citizens of those places. I won't get into details, but this comment would be akin to asking "What's the history between the Germans and Jews? Why don't they like each other?". The primary difference being that Germany had a reckoning with the history of what happened during that time, while the Japanese Government has mostly denied that any of its war crimes even happened which never allowed tensions to drop as much as they may have in Europe.
- jpatokal 7y agoActually, Japan has apologized repeatedly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements_issued_by_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements... However, Japan has more than its fair share of far-right fruitcakes who deny everything, and in both Korea and China politicians have found Japan to be a convenient whipping boy whenever they need a distraction from domestic problems.
- inferiorhuman 7y agoHowever, Japan has more than its fair share of far-right fruitcakes who deny everything They elected a far right "fruitcake" to the post of prime minister.
- T-R 7y agoTo be fair, they only elected the conservative party, the LDP; the party elected the prime minister. Granted, they've elected the LDP almost continuously since 1955. Of course, they tried electing the other party in 2009, but their leadership kept resigning. Of course, given the LDP's stranglehold on politics, one has to wonder why they feel a need to pander to the nettouyo.
- cattlefarmer 7y agoI stopped paying to attention to politics about 5 years ago and am very surprised to learn that the major opposition party (DPJ?) has essentially fractured into multiple, smaller parties, all using a variation of the same name. At this point, I'm not even sure who to vote for anymore.
- smartpants 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_under_Japanese_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_under_Japanese_rule
- jpatokal 7y agoHistorically, Korea was repeatedly invaded by Japan. More recently, Korea was a Japanese colony between 1910 and 1945, during which the Japanese ruled with an iron fist and did their best to destroy Korean identity by forcing people to take Japanese names etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_under_Japanese_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_under_Japanese_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Japan%E2%80%93Korea_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Japan%E2%80%93Korea...
- edflsafoiewq 7y agoWhich certainly explains why Korea doesn't like Japan, but why does Japan seem to dislike Korea so much?
- user982 7y agoXenophobia and belief in Japanese racial superiority: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihonjinron#Specific_theses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihonjinron#Specific_theses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_issues_in_Japan#Pre-war_xenophobia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_issues_in_Japan#Pre-war...
- mirimir 7y agoMaybe because they're not Japanese enough. See https://www.upi.com/TOP_NEWS/WORLD-NEWS/2019/04/17/ANTI-KOREAN-RACISM-ON-THE-RISE-IN-JAPAN-FILMMAKER-SAYS/5661555477281/ https://www.upi.com/TOP_NEWS/WORLD-NEWS/2019/04/17/ANTI-KORE...
- donpark 7y agoMuch of it can be blamed on propaganda driven by economic decline and political scapegoating. While Korean music, drama, and movies are popular in Japan, consumers are mostly women. Among small but growing and very vocal population of Japanese men, Korea-bashing books and manga are popular. Later trend is not unrelated to continuing economic decline of Japan. And Japanese politicians are leveraging and fueling that trend to divert the blame.
- duckonomy 7y ago
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- max76 7y agoOne small chapter of the history "The Mimizuka ... is a monument in Kyoto, Japan, dedicated to the sliced noses of killed Korean soldiers and civilians as well as Ming Chinese troops taken as war trophies during the Japanese invasions of Korea from 1592 to 1598." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimizuka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimizuka
- devonkim 7y agoBesides more recent events several hundred years ago Japan also tried to invade Korea under Tokotomo Hideyoshi. Japanese Imperialism has a bit of history to it that makes Koreans uncomfortable given the peninsula has been under constant conquest by its neighbors for at least a thousand years now.
- user982 7y agoThe article notes that both statistics are even worse in South Korea than Japan.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoThat may be, but if those statistics are the problem, going to Japan is surely not the solution.
- xenihn 7y agoWhat's your alternative option?
- jpatokal 7y agoBoth countries have low birthrates, but Japan is far enough along the labor shortage curve that unemployment has been essentially eradicated in Japan. From the friendly article: According to Statistics Korea, the national statistics office, the unemployment rate last year for people aged between 15 and 29 was 9.5 percent, compared with 3.8 percent overall and 3.6 percent for Japanese 15 to 24. Also, Japan has a vocal far-right fringe, but the average Japanese person has no qualm with Koreans and Korean TV, music, food etc is widely popular. There are over 500,000 Koreans living in Japan, many 2nd or 3rd generation, and plenty more naturalized Japanese of Korean descent. If anything, I'd suspect there's a lot more antipathy in Korea towards Japan than the other way around...
- antome 7y agoTo draw some analogies, Japan has some very conservative people in power, but that's more to do with the election systems that give more power to monolithic parties that attract rural voters. When you look at the proportional vote (Japan has FPTP + a non-reproportioning proportional segment), Japanese people are on average much less conservative than their elected government would make it seem.
- user982 7y ago> Also, Japan has a vocal far-right fringe, but the average Japanese person has no qualm with Koreans and Korean TV, music, food etc is widely popular. And Israelis love Palestinian/Arab hummus. That feeling is not transitive to the Palestinian people. > There are over 500,000 Koreans living in Japan, many 2nd or 3rd generation, and plenty more naturalized Japanese of Korean descent. If anything, I'd suspect there's a lot more antipathy in Korea towards Japan than the other way around... Zainichi Koreans of any generation are not citizens and have limited rights in Japan, and can face widespread discrimination if they do not hide their identities/ancestry.
- w00kie 7y agoThey can naturalize anytime they want but choose not to...
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- nemonemo 7y agoSouth Korean here. My anecdata: some of my friends went to Japan for advanced degrees. Most of them came back within a couple of years after their study. 10x or more people around me went to US. The majority of them are still in the country after a few years. Such tendency was remarkable to me, given the difficulty of learning English and relative ease of learning Japanese by Koreans. There is one thing I can't understand from the article: it says a low birth rate as a reason of an increase in migration. Why would a low birth rate lead to more migration? I can understand the unemployment rate as a reason, and SK surely has a serious problem of low birth rate.. but that's for new babies...
- pojzon 7y agoYounger people can think about their future too. Anyone should be free to seek better future for him/herself. Aging society is a big issue. When i was studing, alot of thought went into "my county has a lot of internal issues that doesnt seem to be solved anytime soon - mby its better to jump the ship before it sinks".
- throwmeback 7y agoThose are my daily thoughts about my country. The problem is that if I move away, all my friends will still be there and be miserable, which makes a tough decision to make.
- badpun 7y agoLots of people move abroad for a couple years, save a lot of money there, build strong CVs and then come back to their home country. With the saved money, they can easily start a life (buy house/flat without debt etc.) and strong CV presumably allows them to get a decent job. Of course, it is only suitable in countries that are at least somewhat developed, don't have wars etc.
- umanwizard 7y ago> given the difficulty of learning English and relative ease of learning Japanese by Koreans This surprises me a bit (I believe you; I am just surprised.) Why do Koreans think learning Japanese is easier than learning English?
- winningcontinue 7y agoRead the story but they're very short on the data. cited a job fair in Nagoya which had 40 Koreans. Then a Korean job search firm that placed the most people to work in Japan out of any country. Is it just me or is the article short on enough evidence to make this a piece?
- awl130 7y agoThis article is laughably wrong (probably a puff piece to entice Korean students to work in Japan). The truth is exactly the opposite: there are fewer Koreans in Japan every year (as measured by foreign residents in Japan -- this includes work and student visas). The fastest rising immigrants to Japan from 2015-2018 are in descending order[1]: Vietnam Cambodia Uzbekistan Myanmar Sri Lanka South Korea comes in dead last, having DECLINED by 10% during the same period. The truth is that as soon as Korea became a developed country, having joined the OECD in the 90s, immigration to Japan slowed to a trickle, precisely for the historical reasons that you might suspect. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#Foreign_residents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#Foreign_...
- rchaud 7y agoIt did sound like a puff piece, since the only company that was even mentioned by name was a recruiting/staffing agency.
- distantaidenn 7y agoAccording to some sources (Bloomberg) South Korea is currently the most innovative country in the world, and having spent significant time there, I wholeheartedly agree. Despite the mythos surrounding Japan espoused by some ill-informed westerners, while it is a beautiful country, there is no benefit in moving from Korea to Japan. Japan, while it's my current home, is well past its heyday. This isn't to say it won't return, but the current climate speaks otherwise. This is a pure fluff piece.