Korea-Japan Relations and Communication Structure Exploiting Mutual Aversion Between Koreans and Japanese
Authors:   Asia-Europe Perspective Association, Kim Hyoen-jeoung 
Published: June 2018

This article examines Korea-Japan relations from the theoretical perspective of international culture,which holds that cultural factors that cross national borders help shape international relations.
Although mainstream international relations theory, particularly in international politics and foreign policies, primarily discusses relations between territorial sovereign nations, international relations can be understood as those formed by a range of internationally mobile agents. Based on this premise,the article will investigate the structure of hostile communication between Koreaand Japan, as well as facts pertaining to the matter. This is a prevalent phenomenon, especially regarding banil, anti-Japanese sentiment among Korean people, and hyeomhan, which is the Japanese aversion to anything Korean. While South Korea’s formal opening to Japanese pop culture in 1998 carried special symbolic significance, the move also precipitated the emergence of publications dealing with various theories on Japan with the aim of attracting a readership and generating revenues. Until then, such works had not been published in Korea due to nationalistic anti-Japanese sentiment. While regulations on the import of Japanese pop culture were still in place, producers of Japan-related books could exploit the unfriendly coexistence of extreme banil and hyeomhan in order to make handsome profits. By 2000, however, anti-Japanese hostilities had lost their power to boost publications to the bestseller list; thus, rent-seeking was no longer viable.
In regional studies, the importance of cross-disciplinary studies is recognized, but only as long as related individual disciplines are firmly established. To illustrate, the mission of German Japanologists 200 years ago was to study Japan as a whole and present a general interpretation of the Asian country. In contrast, requirements for 21st-century Korean scholars who study their island neighbor This article examines Korea-Japan relations from the theoretical perspective of international culture,which holds that cultural factors that cross national borders help shape international relations.
Although mainstream international relations theory, particularly in international politics and foreign policies, primarily discusses relations between territorial sovereign nations, international relations can be understood as those formed by a range of internationally mobile agents. Based on this premise,the article will investigate the structure of hostile communication between Koreaand Japan, as well as facts pertaining to the matter. This is a prevalent phenomenon, especially regarding banil, anti-Japanese sentiment among Korean people, and hyeomhan, which is the Japanese aversion to anything Korean. While South Korea’s formal opening to Japanese pop culture in 1998 carried special symbolic significance, the move also precipitated the emergence of publications dealing with various theories on Japan with the aim of attracting a readership and generating revenues. Until then, such works had not been published in Korea due to nationalistic anti-Japanese sentiment. While regulations on the import of Japanese pop culture were still in place, producers of Japan-related books could exploit the unfriendly coexistence of extreme banil and hyeomhan in order to make handsome profits. By 2000, however, anti-Japanese hostilities had lost their power to boost publications to the bestseller list; thus, rent-seeking was no longer viable.
In regional studies, the importance of cross-disciplinary studies is recognized, but only as long as related individual disciplines are firmly established. To illustrate, the mission of German Japanologists 200 years ago was to study Japan as a whole and present a general interpretation of the Asian country. In contrast, requirements for 21st-century Korean scholars who study their island neighbor are somewhat different.