Survey Reveals That 70% Of Japanese Don’t Trust South Korea

[Flake]

Survey Reveals That 70% Of Japanese Don’t Trust South Korea

by Beth on Thursday, November 21, 2013

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Back in July, the South Korean high court awarded compensation workers who had been forced into working for the Japanese during the second world war. Four workers were each granted a sum of 100 million won (approx. $95,000) by a Korean high court judge to be paid by Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metal, who the court ruling stated had committed “crimes against humanity by joining the Japanese government in mobilising forced labour for the sake of the war of aggression”.

This has been an issue of some controversy in Japan, particularly since the Japanese government takes the position that any claims of compensation to be paid to South Korea were resolved under the agreements surrounding the promulgation of the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations between the two nations. However, it is also the case that when the treaty was signed almost fifty years ago, issues such as forced military prostitution and forced labour were not discussed; for example the first former comfort woman came forward to speak about her experiences in 1991, several decades after the claims for compensation were supposedly resolved.

In light of the Korean court’s controversial ruling, a timely public opinion survey has revealed that around 70% of respondents did not trust South Korea, while an overwhelming 79.2% said that Japan should not pay compensation. Cue inflammatory comments from the vocal internet right wing.

From MSN Sankei:
Sankei Shimbun-FNN Opinion Poll: 70% “Can’t Trust Korea”, 80% say “Don’t Pay Korea Compensation”

Recently there have been a series of judgements ordering Japanese companies to pay compensation to Koreans who were forced to work in Korea during the war; however in a joint opinion poll carried out by the Sankei Shimbun and FNN [Fuji News Network], the number of respondents who replied that Korea, Japan’s diplomatic and economic partner “can’t be trusted” reached almost 70%.

Regarding the payment of compensation, it appears that the Japanese government takes the stance that the issue had already been resolved under the Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea, and the Claim Rights Agreement, which were signed at the time of normalization of relations between the two nations in Showa 40 (1965), and take the judgements of Korean courts as one factor in the cooling of Japanese-Korean relations. Japanese economic organisations such as theKeidanren voiced their concerns on November 6 that this would have a bad influence on the economic relations of both countries.

According to the results of the opinion poll, 69.3% of respondents said that Japan “couldn’t trust Korea as a diplomatic and economic partner”, while 16.8% said that Korea could be trusted. 82.7% of respondents indicated that they “could not agree” with the judgement of the Korean courts, while 5.6% said that they could. Finally, 79.2% of respondents said that “Japan should not pay compensation”.

Still, regarding calls for revision of the Kono Statement, due to the fact that no official documents have been found that corroborate the 1993 Statement, which accepted the forced recruitment of military prostitutes, 55% of survey respondents said that “I think the Kono Statement should be revised”, greatly outweighing the 27.5% of respondents who said they “didn’t think” that the statement should be revised.