CHAPTER 1: Introduction
1.1. Tigers in the Sun
The term ―tigers‖ is often used to describe the four East Asian countries who accelerated their economies in the 1970s, a decade where many of their neighbors, with an exception of Japan, severely struggled. These tigers – Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan, are constantly referred to in scholarly Asian articles and texts, especially in the light of economic studies. While all four of these tigers were at some point occupied by the once rising sun of the Japanese empire, only two of the four underwent long-term Japanese colonial periods. It is these same two tigers, in fact, that went through the trials and tribulations of martial law in the mid-twentieth century, only to rise to prominent democracies by the 1990s. It is these same two tigers – South Korea and Taiwan, which are now so often compared in virtually every category, from economics to democratization, that will be investigated throughout this research paper to determine the reason for their heavily differing public opinions toward their former colonial master – Japan.
1.2. Background of Korean and Taiwanese Public Opinions Toward Japan
In 2013, a Japanese – South Korean joint poll from Genron –EAI showed that 76.6% of South Koreans ―held ‗unfavorable‘ or ‗relatively unfavorable‘ views of Japan.‖ (Hiroshima, Shimizu, 2013) By contrast, a 2012 Interchange Association Japan (IAJ) survey found that ―65 percent of Taiwanese feel either
‗close‘ or ‗really close‘ to Japan.‖ (Thim, Matusoka, 2014). These are just two of many data collections that show the bizarre divide in how these two former
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can search far and wide, and they will always find results that show a heavy skew of Taiwanese who appreciate Japan, and Koreans who despise her.
During the late autumn of 2015, and early winter of 2016, I conducted my own opinion polls among both Taiwanese and South Korean respondents about their views toward Japan, as well as other demographically, historically, and politically driven questions to try to find out the reasons for such differing opinions toward Japan from two places who were once colonized by her. My results were not terribly close to those of the Genron-EAI or IAJ, but certainly continued the trend of reaching higher numbers of Taiwanese people who like Japan (40.2%), and South Korean people who dislike her (44%). It is my mission through this research paper, my self-conducted surveys, secondary sociological data, and personal interviews to prove exactly why there is such an opposite general public opinion toward Japan between two of her former colonies - South Korea and Taiwan.
Figure 1: Taiwanese Public Opinions Toward Japan
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Figure 1.1: South Korean Public Opinions Toward Japan
1.3. Personal Motivations
In the Fall of 2009, to say that I was adapting to my new surroundings would be an understatement. I was a fresh fish in the post-college working world, and had chosen to do it on the other side of the planet – the Republic of Korea. Aside from Puerto Rico, England, and Ireland, I had never even spent any time off of the shores of my home country – the United Stated States of America. So, as one might imagine, embarking on my first ever full-time white-collar job in a country whose language, food, and traditions I was quite unfamiliar with was quite an overwhelming experience.
That first month or two in this Far Eastern peninsula were especially unlike anything I had ever encountered. I saw, tasted, and heard some of the most interesting elements of culture that I could have hoped for – I was stared at from all angles when I walked down the street; as I was living in a smaller city over an hour outside of the more international Seoul, residents were not very used to seeing Western men. I ate delicious, spicy barbecue, but we had to do every step
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enveloped the torn up streets at an even higher rate than the booming metropolis of Manhattan that I had grown up so close to; Korean Pop songs blared out of the speakers of almost every coffee, eye glass, and cell phone shop in sight as pedestrians went on with their days in what were usually stylish outfits that made me feel dangerously underdressed and unsophisticated. Amongst all of the mind-blowing every day aspects of this new life, though, one moment will always stay particularly tattooed to my brain; it was a quote from one of my seven-year old students, as I was working in this country as an English teacher.―Why [did] the Japanese people take the Koreans?‖
In English that was miraculously barely broken, this kindergartener had unmistakably inquired about the humiliating years of the Japanese occupation of Korea. He proceeded to explain to me that he had heard about this from his mother, and it had not taken long to also make him upset. As this was very early on in my Korean life, I was still taken aback by the forwardness of this child who had not even been alive a decade ago, let alone during the period of Japanese colonization. It did not take me long to find out that this student‘s negative impression turned opinion of the giant island to the East was by no means an exception. From students expressing their feelings during many of my lectures, to locals in the bars rooting for whichever team was playing against Japan in a soccer match, the disdain for the former colonizer was in full affect, even more so than the looming threat of North Korea. Korean Studies scholars explain such situations as key examples of Koreans expressing their ―han‖ or inner rage; such
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feelings can be fueled by history such as Japanese war crimes. (Hyong, 2014) During the two years that I lived in the ROK, such a sentiment in no way wavered.
It was in 2011, after all, that a South Korean friend of mine compared Japan and the ROK‘s contemporary geopolitical situation to that of Israel and Palestine.
It was for these reasons that I wondered, when moving to former Japanese colony Taiwan, if I would encounter similar feelings. Soon after arriving there, though, I found out that, despite the shared colonial history, many feelings towards Japan do not replicate those that I had experienced in South Korea. For the four years of my Taiwanese life, this has truly been a topic that I have tried to dig to the bottom of. I have been back to visit the ROK twice, and this difference in Japanese feelings still creates a web of confusion not just for me, but other friends of mine who are from or live there. Not only was Taiwan also a Japanese colony, but for fifteen years longer. The Republic of China was the very first colony of Japan, and completely controlled by her for a whopping five decades.
I have now lived, worked, and studied in South Korea and Taiwan for a total of six years. My experiences in both countries have been incredible, but at the same time quite different. I find this topic to be especially interesting since Korea and Taiwan are so often compared in fields such as economics, politics, and technology. Their relationships with Japan, though, could not be any more on the contrary. It is my aim, through this thesis paper, to find out exactly why.
1.4. Research Objectives
The purpose of this paper is to find out why so many Taiwanese like Japan, and why so many Koreans hate her, despite their shared colonial history with the superpower. While this Thesis paper is undoubtedly geared toward Asia – Pacific studies, the specific focus within this subject is that of Area Studies.
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answers that allow us to distinguish key differences within East Asia. It is forever my goal to establish and explain the reasons behind geopolitical relationships and socio-cultural differences within the Asia – Pacific region. We live in an age where, 70 years after the end of the Pacific War, governmental and cultural relationships within East Asian neighbors are tenser than ever. East Asia continues to struggle to achieve regional strength, due to painstaking differences among different nations in the region. (Goh, 2013) Japan still stands as a historical, yet contemporary piece that does not fit to the puzzle when dealing with Korean and Chinese diplomatic strategy. She is one of the key agitators in the line of hopeful progress and peace in Asia – Pacific relations, due in a large part to her violent role in the Pacific War and what many Chinese and Korean citizens feel is an insincere approach to apologize. (Curtis, 2015)Quite differently, as this Thesis will very often reflect, Taiwanese people, and typically the soon to be ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), tend to be more favorable to Japan. They focus their tension towards Mainland China in relation to a struggle for sovereignty, and fear of annexation. Through any of these geopolitical and cultural wars, it is important for us to understand the differences between the people, and understand the sociological concepts why. In an effort to master Area Studies, despite the fact that such problems may indeed continue for quite some time, we cannot make any hint of progress without first grasping the meaning behind such quarrels. With recent empirical data, I will first confirm the striking differences in opinion towards Japan. Such data will not only be secondary, but also my own. I will then dissect several possible motivations, and come to a conclusion.
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It is very easy to detect the contrast in public opinions towards Japan after visiting, reading, or watching media on Taiwan or South Korea. However, not many people can answer why such a contrast exists. Moreover, not many scholars have published a work like mine that actually digs beneath the possible reasons for why. There are an infinite number of academic textbooks, articles, and journals that explain why South Korea and Mainland Chinese have a disdain for the Japanese. This is researched and discussed almost regularly in East Asian academic circles. There seem to be just as many publications and dialogue in regards to the Taiwanese and their more positive opinions of their former imperial tyrant. Nonetheless, it is extremely difficult to identify work which touches base on the interest in and mystery behind why the two former colonies to the west of Japan hold such differing images of her.
More importantly, in an academic world where Taiwan and South Korea are regularly compared in almost every other category, be it economics, history of democratization, or technology, they are not in their psychological approaches to the Land of the Rising Sun. Because of this absence of information, and what I have experienced in my years in both the ROC and ROK, I plan to deliver on this topic with both accuracy and depth.
1.5. Methodology
Despite the plethora of information that confirms the fact that Taiwanese and South Korean public opinions toward Japan are quite different, I have also conducted my own sociological surveys. This is not only to further cement the differences in this Northeast Asian triangle‘s opinions of each other, but to also dig deeper and clarify such reasons for this. For example, I have asked the general question in regards to the surveyors‘ feelings towards Japan (like/dislike/neutral).
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This has allowed me to gather the percentages of Taiwanese and South Koreans who feel a certain way towards their neighbor to the East. In addition, each survey contained questions about age, importance of political issues, historical events, and how they feel that the overall Japanese occupation has affected the education and economies of their countries. This allowed me to deduce the key factor(s) as to why there is such a difference in opinion between the two former colonies. The surveys for South Koreans and Taiwanese have some different questions pertaining to their own historical events and political issues with Japan.
I have distributed a total of 400 surveys – 200 in both South Korea, and 200 in Taiwan. The surveys each asked 12 questions in relation to Japan in the countries‘ respective languages. I truly feel that I was able to get a very well-rounded pool of respondents from different age groups and backgrounds.
Below I have posted the graphs to show confirmation of my respondents being ROK and ROC citizens, as well as the percentages of each age group and party identification. This is to first establish credibility and show that my sample was not skewed by an overwhelming amount of respondents from a particular generation or party affiliation. As one can see, many respondents actually identified themselves as independents.
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Figure 1.2: Citizenship (Taiwan)
Figure 1.3: Citizenship (South Korea)
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Figure 1.4: Korean Age Groups Figure 1.5: Taiwanese Age Groups
Figure 1.6: Korean Political Party Identification Figure 1.7: Taiwanese Political Party Identification
The details of how these particular survey questions relate to arguments behind the reason for such differences in public opinions toward Japan will be explained in my theoretical framework section. Since I have been in Taiwan, I have had the opportunity to distribute surveys in a wide range of places - from libraries, to offices, from city parks to the school that I work in. I also had the help of many great Taiwanese friends, who helped distribute surveys to their family members, some of whom were in their 70s and 80s. As I used to live in South Korea, I was fortunate enough to have an excellent research team distribute many of my surveys in office and classroom settings, as well as senior citizen
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communities. Out of my Taiwanese sample, 43/200 surveys were distributed online. Out of my Korean sample, 11/200 surveys were distributed online. The rest were all manually distributed.
As this is still a qualitative research paper, I have conducted several interviews from a varied group of Taiwanese and South Korean people in regards to their opinions on Japan. My Taiwanese interviewees include an established professor from the International Relations Department at National Chengchi University (NCCU), a first generation restaurateur who actively supports both the Kuomintang (KMT) and the New Party (NP), and a camera equipment company boss who actively supports the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
My Korean interviewees include a well-traveled housewife who is tri-lingual with fluencies in both English and Japanese, and a Pattern Related Design student at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). All in all, my interviewees‘ ages range from as young as 26, and as old as 70 years.
Because this Thesis is on the subject of public opinion, I purposely chose interviewees from a wide range of backgrounds. Typically, the credibility of a Thesis rises with a larger amount of expert opinions and interviews. However, the goal of my particular research is not to only unveil the public opinions of South Korean and Taiwanese professors toward Japan, but all types of citizens. Surely, self-conducted and secondary sociological data that I have collected, analyzed, and reported on are not limited to ROC and ROK citizens of certain categories.
For this reason, to fulfill my scholarly responsibility to use sociological methods to answer questions regarding the vast difference in South Korean and Taiwanese public opinions toward Japan, I interviewed the diverse group of people that I did.
This is quite similar to the fact that I distributed my surveys in many different types of atmospheres.
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In addition to my self-conducted surveys and interviews, as I will mention in my literature, I have gathered, analyzed, and reflected on a massive amount of secondary sociological data from scholarly articles, books, films, and journals.
Once again, such secondary sociological data is gathered from studies on perspectives from South Korean and Taiwanese people from all different wakes of life in order to have a fair understanding of where such public opinion towards Japan comes from. By using quantitative methods such as self-conducted and secondary sociological data, I was able to establish a lot of credibility from numbers that do not lie. There are many parts to this study, first having to confirm the statistic that show that many more South Korean people hold negative views toward Japan, and many more Taiwanese people hold positive views toward her.
After clarifying that, it of course becomes important to gain statistics that explain exactly why such a difference in public opinion occurs. Due to the complexity and sensitivity of the issue, I felt that it was indeed necessary to use quantitative data to illustrate a level of objectivity in regards to how big the difference is, as well as the reasons behind it.
As crucial as quantitative data is, though, I also found it necessary to use qualitative methods such as interviews and scholarly articles. These are equally as valuable, because as accurate and telling as numbers can be, an issue such as public opinion toward Japan requires much background information, whether it be political ideologies, historical perspectives, or cultural identification. By also utilizing qualitative data, I was able to provide a backbone to the quantitative data, and provide logical, personal answers to the numbers at hand. Through the voices of many scholarly authors, and members of my subject population group, this Thesis provides deeper questions, theories, and closure while simultaneously resting on some very convincing data.
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I strongly believe that both qualitative and quantitative data are needed to get to the root of many research questions. In this Thesis, my quantitative and qualitative data complement each other, rather than contradict each other.
Moreover, they give additional coatings of truth, rather than take the risk of plunging into a deep sea of generalizations. It is my scholarly responsibility to make sure that this does not happen, especially in the light of such an emotionally acute topic such as Japanese occupation, or cross-strait relations. There are only so many interviews that one can have without them merely being regarded as anecdotal, and there are only so many graphs and dots that one can use without them being regarded as junk science.
However, when they are used together, with the consistency that is displayed in this Thesis, the value of both is quite strong. The answers in my interviews, and scholarly information in the articles that I used go in complete alignment with the quantitative data that I retrieved from my self-conducted and secondary sociological data. The answers, both qualitative and quantitative, do an unwavering job of informing the reader of why the societies of South Korea and Taiwan have the public opinion toward Japan that they do. The data is sociological because it shows how a certain number of people feel the way they due in relation to the historical and contemporary events of their local and surrounding governments. This public opinion Thesis, with its use of the aforementioned data, succeeds in interpreting how society affects the people being studied. It is the most effective way to truly answer such sociological questions as to why public opinion toward Japan differs amongst Taiwanese and South Koreans.
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1.51. Hypothesis
Based on my empirical data and sociological evidence, I have reason to believe that the reasons for the differences in South Korean and Taiwanese opinions towards Japan are politically and historically motivated. My hypothesis,
Based on my empirical data and sociological evidence, I have reason to believe that the reasons for the differences in South Korean and Taiwanese opinions towards Japan are politically and historically motivated. My hypothesis,