Suppose Washington had transported 1.2 million Canadians to work as slave laborers for the American war effort in the early 1940s and forced hundreds of women to serve in military brothels. It's hypothetical, of course, but it gives you a sense of the old enmities that haunt relations between Japan and the Korean Peninsula. Today, remarkably, the relationship between Japan and South Korea is largely constructive.
Competition is confined mainly to the economic realm.
Still, it doesn't take much for a middle-aged Japanese or South Korean to launch into a heated diatribe about the superiority of his economy and how it will prevail in this old rivalry. I don't fully buy the line from my friends in Seoul that South Korea is the new economic power in East Asia, while Japan is some sclerotic giant falling behind the global front-runners. Sony, Honda, and Toyota are global brand names. South Korea's best-known companies, with the possible exception of Samsung, don't come close. But just as Japan imported Buddhism, Confucianism, and Chinese characters from Korea centuries ago, Tokyo again would do well to watch and learn from what's going on in Seoul.