Japanese Public Increasingly Positive About 'Improvement in Korea-Japan Relations'... Thanks to Hallyu Content?

[Asia Economy Reporter Onyu Lim] The number of Japanese citizens who believe that Korea-Japan relations improved last year has slightly increased.

According to Japan's Cabinet Office on the 19th, a diplomatic public opinion survey was conducted from October to December last year targeting 3,000 people aged 18 and over nationwide (response rate 62.2%). The percentage of respondents who answered that they do not think the current Korea-Japan relationship is "favorable" was 82.4%. This is a 5.5 percentage point decrease compared to the same survey result about a year ago (87.9%).

Also, the proportion of respondents who said they do not feel close to Korea dropped by 7.0 percentage points from 71.5% in the previous survey to 64.5% this time. The somewhat improved perception of Korea-Japan relations among Japanese citizens is analyzed to be influenced by a kind of base effect as well as the Korean Wave boom spreading in Japan, centered around dramas.

In the previous survey conducted in October 2019, during a period when Korea-Japan relations were deteriorating due to the South Korean Supreme Court's final ruling on compensation for victims of forced labor under Japanese colonial rule, the proportion of respondents who answered that "the bilateral relationship is not favorable" surged by 22.2 percentage points compared to the 2018 survey conducted before the forced labor compensation ruling, reaching an all-time high.

The proportion of respondents who said they do not feel close to Korea also reached the highest level since the question was first asked in 1978, recording 71.5% in the 2019 survey.

Meanwhile, despite the worsening Korea-Japan relations last year, Korean Wave content such as the drama "Crash Landing on You" gained great popularity in Japan.

Regarding relations with China, the percentage of respondents who think the relationship is not favorable reached 81.8%, an increase of 6.3 percentage points from the previous survey. The proportion of respondents who do not feel close to China also rose by 2.4 percentage points to 77.3%, indicating that Japanese public sentiment toward China has generally worsened.

Kyodo News analyzed that these results are likely related to China's repeated incursions into Japan's territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands (called Diaoyu Islands in Chinese), which Japan effectively controls, as China strengthens its sovereignty claims.

On the other hand, the proportion of respondents who viewed relations with the United States as favorable increased by 6.1 percentage points to 86.3%. The percentage of those who feel close to the U.S. also rose by 5.3 percentage points to 84.0%, reaffirming that the United States is Japan's most important ally in the eyes of the Japanese public.

The Japanese Cabinet Office stated that due to COVID-19, the survey method was changed from face-to-face interviews to mail surveys, making simple comparisons between this and the previous survey results difficult.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.