Geopolitics, Status Perceptions, and Public Attitudes in Korea–Japan Relations

1. Energy systems and environmental policy in East Asia 2. Introduction to the modelling in this book Part 1: The Power Choices and the Sustainability of Energy Usage in East Asia 3. Modeling the Power Sectors in East Asia: The choice of Power Sources 4. Modeling the power sector in East Asia: Economic and Environmental impacts of the choices of power sources 5. The environmental and macroeconomic implications of phasing out nuclear power in Japan - E3MG vs CGE modeling results 6. Energy efficiency policies in East Asia: Macroeconomic implications and interactions with existing climate policies 7. Energy structure and energy security under climate mitigation scenarios in East Asia Part 2: Environmental Tax Reform for Environmental and Economic Balance 8. The double dividend of an environmental tax reform in East Asian economies 9. The macroeconomic impacts of ETR: A comparison of model results 10. Environmental taxes and fiscal deficits 11. The distributional effects of low carbon policies in Japan and South Korea 12. Human Capital and Environmental Taxation in Japan and South Korea 13. Competitiveness issues and carbon leakage 14. The role for border tax adjustments Part 3: Trade and Interdependency of Economy and Environment in East Asia 15. Measuring both production-based and consumption-based CO2 emissions of different countries based on the multi-region input-output model 16. An empirical study on the interdependency of energy consumption and CO2 emissions under the international IO structure of the Asia-Pacific region 17. Emissions from international maritime transportation in East Asia 18. An environmental assessment of FTA in East Asian regions using the CGE modeling approach 19. An environmental assessment of East Asian trade agreements using E3ME-Asia 20. Conclusion

South Korea–Japan relations are at their lowest point in decades, as colonial era disputes flare once again. Most pundits argue that the South Korean public is strongly united against Japan. We argue that South Korean elites are sharply divided over how to manage the crisis; this division is starting to impact how South Koreans understand colonial era narratives; and, long‐term, bilateral relations depend on how these growing divisions play out. Despite state censorship, a rising counter‐narrative in South Korea challenges the dominant, Manichaean, anti‐Japanese one. For the first time, Korea and Japan have a realistic chance of reconciling based on liberal public discourse and a nuanced, empirically based understanding of history.

In the context of growing tensions in East Asia over territorial disputes and history issues, one can observe the rise of anti-Chinese sentiments among South Koreans in the early 2010s although many South Koreans had positive views on China a decade earlier. What affects South Korean attitude toward China? Despite China’s significance to South Korea, there have been surprisingly few scholarly works attempting to answer this question. Based on an empirical analysis of survey data, this paper finds that Koreans’ favorable attitude towards China is negatively affected by threat perception of China’s military buildup, opposition to an fta with China, and exclusive national identity but not by whether or not one feels threatened by the American unilateralism and Japan’s remilitarization. This finding suggests that South Koreans’ feeling toward China is primarily affected by bilateral relationship rather than by balancing behaviors in consideration of broader security environments.

Kawashima is a city in Tokushima Prefecture, Japan. The worship activities carried out at the Kawashima prayer room include congregational prayers, namely Friday prayers, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha prayers and Al-Quran Education Park (TPA) activities for children. The number of children who took part in this activity was around 20 people, who were the sons and daughters of an Indonesian couple and an Indonesian-Japanese couple living in Kawashima. The problems faced by service target partners are language and infrastructure constraints. The majority of the Japanese population does not speak English. Likewise, Indonesian citizens in Japan are not fluent in English. Even though Indonesian citizens living in Japan are able to speak Japanese, this language is not the mother tongue of Indonesian citizens, so that it is possible to be constrained by a language barrier in communicating. This is a consideration for Indonesian citizens in communicating and accessing facilities that involve interaction with Japanese citizens, including in this case education regarding children's dental health. This is the background for the UMY court team to provide dental health education to children through TPA activities at the Kawashima prayer room. The educational method used is counseling using video media with the Indonesian language of instruction. The results of counseling show that there is an increase in knowledge of dental and oral health of parents before and after counseling.Keywords: Education, Japan, Dental and oral health, Indonesian Muslims, Qur'an Education Park, TPA

Mixed marriages between spouses of different nationalities present a number of legal issues. As mixed marriages involve two different legal systems, it is important to understand which system applies. This understanding is important for the diaspora of Indonesians in Japan, given that the number of Indonesian citizens in Japan continues to increase, according to data from the Japanese Ministry of Home Affairs and Communications. This situation increases the potential for mixed marriages between Indonesian and Japanese citizens. This community service activity aims to provide legal insight on how to determine the applicable law and the conditions for mixed marriages. The method employed in this legal counselling is descriptive. Answers to questions asked are based on legislation and principles of private international law. Legal counselling on the legal aspects of mixed marriages for the Indonesian diaspora community in Japan can be said to be effective and appropriate. The participants indicated that there had been no previous legal counselling on the subject of mixed marriages, particularly in the context of comparing Indonesian and Japanese laws. They expressed hope that further legal counselling activities could be conducted via Zoom facilities on other legal issues.

This article addresses a profoundly curious question of why Korea and Japan conflict with each other despite deepening ties and growing transactions. In contrast to the existing explanations, this article makes three analytical innovations. First, for inducing cooperation between Korea and Japan, what matters is convergence/divergence of external threat perception, not the magnitude of threat. Second, history is not a constant but a variable. Historical contentions can be escalated or deescalated depending on political situations. Third, the role of the US in managing Korea–Japan relations is important but not determinant. The style of US engagement in East Asia serves as an intervening variable for conflict management. This article suggests that frictions are highest when historical contentions are escalated and external threat perception diverges. On the other hand, cooperation potential is highest when historical contentions are deescalated and threat perception converges.

In the globalizing society, it is inevitable to have good relations with neighboring countries. After WW II, global areas have been formed differently by America. In other words, America had set multilateralism system in Europe, in contrast to bilateralism system in East Asia. So, East Asian countries couldn't communicate and exchange without America for a long time. However, in the Post-Cold War, though this mood was dissolved, it is still difficult to say East Asian countries have good relationship one another. In this paper, I argue that the reason is unsolved problems, the emotional matters among the nations. Unlike Europe, it occurred past problems in East Asia repeatedly and continuously. Then, it makes hard to cooperate the nations. On the basis of Constructivism perspective, this paper takes an example, Korea-Japan relations, which has some unsolved past problems. In Korea-Japan relations, there are many tries and efforts to have a good relation politically and socially. Yet, it comes to nothing whenever past problems happened between two nations. In the political part, we can find it by examining the change of policies toward the nation before and after occurring past problems. Likewise, in the social part, as one of evidences, the change rate of number of tourists coming and going to the countries proves it. Irrational factors can affect relations between nations.

Reviewed by: The Japan-South Korea Identity Clash: East Asian Security and the United States by Brad Glosserman and Scott A. Snyder Ria Chae The Japan-South Korea Identity Clash: East Asian Security and the United States by Brad Glosserman and Scott A. Snyder. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. 218pp. In-between the Christmas chimes and sounds of wooden mallets pounding rice for New Year festivities to usher in 2016, citizens of Japan and South Korea seemed to have been given a Christmas-New Year present by their governments—a surprise announcement that the two countries had reached an agreement with regard to the “comfort women” issue. The agreement was designed as a step toward improving a bilateral relationship that has been consistently undermined by historical and territorial disputes. Yet far from being pleased with the gift, many Japanese and Korean political leaders and intellectuals expressed their strong opposition to the deal. Now, several months after the announcement, though there are no visible signs of further souring in South Korean-Japanese relations—which in itself is progress—the two countries are still a galaxy away from developing amicable ties, to say nothing of becoming allies. The Japan-South Korea Identity Clash is an attempt to resolve the longstanding puzzle of what prevents Japan and South Korea from building an alliance relationship. The approach selected—looking at the issue through the prism of differing, or “clashing,” identities—may raise some eyebrows, for no two countries, even those having a friendly or alliance relationship, can be said to have “highly compatible” identities. Take a look at France and England or Germany, for example. But on second thought, it is difficult to find another pair of countries that have such mutual animosity as South Korea and Japan, despite their being in the same camp, joined by so many links, sharing geographic and geopolitical positioning, and having so many commonalities in their worldview, including their perceptions of threats and interests. On the other hand, the intention to build a trilateral alliance by having South [End Page 232] Korea and Japan come closer to each other is an American desire, conceived by and benefitting most apparently the US, even though the book’s authors go to great lengths to pinpoint the advantages of the arrangement to South Korea, Japan, and other regional players. In this light, the second major contribution of the book is bringing the American dimension to the discussion of the issue. The result is a comprehensive study that masterfully weaves in a wide range of related topics. Chapter 1 delineates the puzzle from the positions of policy-makers and theorists of international relations. Chapters 2 and 3 reconstruct the current identities of Japan and South Korea, respectively, based on interviews with elites and data from public opinion surveys over the last two decades. Given the objective of the study, it is natural that the chapters do not examine cultural or ethnic identities, but focus on political and outward-oriented identities, such as elite and public visions of their country’s standing in the world, attitudes to neighboring countries, and perceptions of foreign policy choices. It is here that the reader can most benefit from the expertise of the two authors—both of whom are leading analysts of Japanese and Korean politics in prominent Washington think tanks, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Brad Glosserman) and the Council on Foreign Relations (Scott Snyder)—although scholars of Korea may find the discussion of Korean identity less comprehensive and historically grounded as that of Japanese identity. Chapter 4 provides an overview of existing studies on the US-Japan-South Korea trilateral coordination and puts forth the main argument, that “the threat-based and alliance-based evaluations of conditions for Japan-ROK cooperation cannot overcome the psychological and emotional gaps in perspective on Japan-ROK relations” (p. 95). The argument is supported by an analysis of the development of South Korean-Japanese relations since the early 1990s and the concurrent evolution of public opinion in the two countries. Chapter 5 starts with an overview of the development of bilateral alliances between the US and Japan and South Korea in the post-Cold War period...

Modernity and the Self

In analyzing public opinion concerning the conflict between Japan and South Korea, the role of the media cannot be ignored. To understand Japanese public opinion about Japan–Korea relations, it is imperative to analyze reports by major news organizations and their framing of the specific issues between the two countries. This chapter undertakes this task by computationally analyzing a huge number of news articles published by Japanese and Korean newspapers. More specifically, we used Word2Vec, which expresses the meaning of words in the form of vectors and investigated the semantic structure of news articles on issues related to Takeshima/Dokdo and comfort women. The results indicated that framing differed significantly between the Japanese and the South Korean press, as well as between the liberal and the conservative media in each country. We discuss these differences and their implications in relation to the differing perceptions of the issues between Japan and Korea, which arguably make reconciliation between the two countries more challenging.

South Korea's renewed focus on space weather

Since relevant political actors used the Tokyo Trial as a reference point, a critical reassessment of the trial holds the key to resolving the history problem. First, elements of victor’s justice in the trial need to be critiqued in light of the world-historical context of imperialism and colonialism. This critique will decrease ambivalence that many Japanese citizens feel toward the trial and help them accept Japan’s war crimes decisively. Second, Japan’s victimhood vis-à-vis war crimes of the Allied Powers need to be recognized. Such recognition will allow Japanese citizens to draw on their own victimhood to fully empathize with South Korean and Chinese victims and, in turn, help South Korean and Chinese citizens better understand Japan’s war commemorations. Third, the trial’s government-centered view on Japan’s past aggression needs to be challenged to clarify each Japanese citizen’s share of war responsibility and allow cosmopolitan contrition to become truly nationwide.

In late May 2011, South Korean university students began to stage daily mass protests for ‘half-priced tuitions’. South Korean universities and independent colleges – most of them being private one...

The purpose of my article is to examine the prospects for regional cooperation between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries, and China, Japan, and South Korea known collectively as ASEAN Plus Three,1 on ‘East Asian' cooperation, from the perspectives of strengthening regional and global governance.2 There are rising expectations concerning the future of this forum in various parts of the region. However, the future development of this forum is still uncertain. There are many factors that could both stimulate and obstruct the strengthening of an East Asian regional architecture. This article argues that for the time being there is little possibility for the ASEAN Plus Three to evolve into a more institutionalized mechanism for cooperation. However, it would contribute to enhancing regional and global governance, if it is more tightly linked to existing regional and global institutions. That is, the ASEAN Plus Three might play an important role in forging a multilayered governance structure. The progress of economic globalization and interdependence among nations has promoted moves toward multilayered governance, where regulatory competence tends to be dispersed across global and regional institutions. "East Asian" cooperation must be a part of this complex governance structure that is gradually emerging in contemporary international relations.

The past decade has witnessed worldwide backsliding on democracy, and the COVID-19 pandemic might have exacerbated this trend. This study examined popular confidence in democracy in China, Japan, and South Korea, which represented authoritarian and democratic contexts. The results show that Chinese citizens had a negative perception of the capacity of democracy to control the outbreak of COVID-19 and achieve economic growth, with an unfavourable evaluation of democracy as a better political system than alternatives. Although Japanese and South Korean citizens had more favourable evaluations of democracy than their Chinese counterparts, such positive evaluations were lukewarm in the former two countries. Confidence in the home political system in South Korea did not correlate with confidence in the capability of democracy to address economic challenges, as observed in Japan. The COVID-19 pandemic prompted ordinary people to seek a strong leader, reinforcing Chinese citizens’ beliefs in the superiority of their authoritarian political system. Simultaneously, it weakened South Korean citizens’ confidence in the effectiveness of their home political system. However, it had no discernible impact on Japanese citizens’ belief in the superiority of their political system.