Fifty years ago after the end of Japan's occupation of Korea, Koreans cannot forget the atrocities which Japanese committed against them. It is almost as though the war had just ended yesterday. Emotions are still that strong.
The remarkable thing is that even among Korea's younger generations - people born in the 1950's and 1960's, years after Japan had ceased to be the enemy - anti-Japanese sentiments are high.
On the one hand, Koreans know that the past must be put behind them if they are ever to develop a mature relationship with their closest neighbor. But Japan's sins were too great for them to forgive and forget. What makes matters worse is that Japan still seems to be unwilling to admit its mistakes of the past. Its government has never made a full apology to the satisfaction of the Korean people. The list of Japan’s crimes is long, some crimes too gruesome to even contemplate. Some big ones include an attempt to eradicate the Korean culture by banning the use of the Korean language, forcing all Koreans to use Japanese names, and kidnapping Korean women and girls to serve as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers.
Given this violent history and the fact that the Japanese government still officially refuses to admit that its actions during the occupation were inexcusable, the relationship between the two countries will probably never be very good.
Today the two countries have strong business ties, but the Japanese, although respected by Koreans as being hard-workers, are still looked upon as selfish, unwilling to transfer their technology, and only interested in what they can get out of Korea.
The Japanese, for their part, continue to look down upon Koreans and their culture even though historians have established that much of the Japanese culture was actually borrowed from Korea.
It is anyone’s guess as to how long the feeling of animosity toward these two neighbors will continue. What is clear is that the initiative to improve relations will have to come from the Japanese, since they were the plunderers and Koreans were the victims.
But the probability of Japan ever coming to terms with its past is getting more and more remote as time passes, since many Japanese politicians really believe that Japan has nothing to apologize for.
Many Koreans think that the Japanese are still bitter over having lost the war and all of their possessions in Korea, which they see as a major loss of face.
