Posted on 10/30/2013 9:51:12 PM PDT by TexGrill
SEOUL – Over 60 percent of South Koreans regard Japan as a military threat, according to a recent survey by Seoul-based think tank Asan Institute for Policy Studies.
In the public opinion poll on foreign relations conducted by the think tank, 62 percent said they feel militarily threatened by Japan.
Japan got only 2.66 on a 10-point scale of favorableness, slightly higher than the 2.43 points given to North Korea.
The survey results released Tuesday likely reflect soured ties over territorial and historical issues as well as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s eagerness to allow Japan to exercise its right to collective defense, the think tank said.
But the survey also found that 58.1 percent of the respondents think the two neighboring Asian nations need to hold a summit and that 60.4 percent want a bilateral pact to protect military secrets, suggesting a majority of South Koreans think it necessary to cooperate with Japan.
A thousand adults were surveyed between Sept. 2 and 4.
(Excerpt) Read more at japantimes.co.jp ...
Yeah, that’s just what the Japanese are working on-invading someplace in the East Pacific.
My question is: who is scaring up the S. Koreans about Japan (China?) and why (to dampen the blow when China engages Japan over some islands?).
I am not sure for how muck longer due to the Fukushima radiation contamination.
Not surprised. The folks I talked to when I was in SK back in the early 90s all still had a very dim view of Japan and the Japanese. And I remember reading way back in the 1980s about American military advisors who were constantly frustrated in their attempts to convince the South Koreans that building up their basic forces against the North Koreans was the best way to spend their defense budget, not hi-tech destroyers designed to deal with a hypothetical Japanese naval assault.
I figure most of this goes back to WW2. The Chinese I met that same year had equally long memories regarding the Japanese.
Oh, it is not over. If China and Japan ever do get into a shooting war, most of Asia will back the Chinese - their individual national ties to the USA notwithstanding.
Memories die hard in those countries. Hard to blame the Koreans after what the Japanese did to those people.
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