Koreans hate Japan. Even those who know precious little else about Korea — that place with the spicy food, all that pop music, and the troublesome neighbor? — know that. But in recent years public expressions of anti-Japanese sentiment have been hard to come by here, at least from the under-80 set. Any outside observer might rightfully have asked, do Koreans really hate Japan? When the last generation to remember suffering under Japanese colonial rule passes on, won’t the bad blood dry up entirely? But the past few weeks have breathed new life into Korean resentment against Japan, a feeling that culminated in a protest march through downtown Seoul last Thursday — very much not coincidentally National Liberation Day, when Koreans, both South and North, celebrate Japan’s defeat in the Second World War.
I say “the past few weeks” because I’ve only been in Korea that long, having spent the month and a half before that in the West. Even when I’m out of Korea I make sure to keep up with Korean news, and from it I got the sense that a rumored “trade war” with Japan had grown into a fairly serious matter. Few other stories got much airtime on the television screens on the train back into Seoul from Incheon Airport — a train whose walls were also lined with advertisements for a newly launched Korean budget airline and its many Japanese destination cities. When I got back to my neighborhood, I saw anti-Japan posters here and there along the streets, and even a group of identically dressed college students doing dance routines in favor of boycotts against the country. But it can only have made actual Japanese people in Seoul so uncomfortable, since quite a few of the voices I heard as I made my way home were speaking Japanese.
My first serious thought about all this was a thought shared by many an apolitical Korean: I should see if there’s a sale on at Uniqlo. The Japanese clothing chain has become one of the most visible businesses at which Japan-boycotting Korean consumers have refused to spend money. So have the high-design household-goods retailer Muji, the discount shop Daiso, and even 7-Eleven, whose prevalence in Japan has caused some to mistake it for a Japanese brand. Japan has also seen a drop in tourism from Korea, on top of the loss caused by the belief (uncommon in the rest of the developed world) that the whole country has been dangerously radioactive since the Fukushima Daiichi power plant disaster of 2011. Pictures of signs denying Japanese customers entry to Korean businesses have circulated on social media. And a middle-aged man went viral by smashing up his own Lexus on video, shouting about his embarrassment at owning a Japanese car.
Read the whole thing at the Los Angeles Review of Books.