Japan and South Korea hope to be friends again
Japan and South Korea hope to be friends again
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Japan and South Korea hope to be friends again – DW – 08/25/2025
Comments
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now that is commendable
how was the situation till now? japan, korea and china all hate each other for some reason?
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for some reason?
I don't mean to be a dick, but it might have something to do with the Japanese Empire having massacred them in the past.
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ok lol i didn't want to come across as disrespectful, i just have zero knowledge about the history of the far east.
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Check out Wikipedia's many articles on imperial Japan's invasions of China and Korea. Relations are still frosty I believe primarily because Japan's (mostly conservative) leadership has been steadfast in refusing to acknowledge the vast majority of wrongdoings of the past with respect to China and Korea.
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This is big. The animosity between them runs deep.
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We can only hope. The Japanese royal family has acknowledged to be directly descended from one of the three kingdoms of ancient korea. Their kingdom crumbled under attack and there was a mass exodus to Japan. Later Korean soldiers would attack Japan twice under the banner of the khanate. And Japan would attack Korea under hideyoshi. There has never been friendship between Korea and Japan although the japanese royals are ethnically koreans
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I suspect what we’ll see is an anti China alliance between Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, and Vietnam as Chinese influence grows. Probably won’t be something official like NATO but it does seem to be in their strategic interest to make this happen. Especially now that US support is iffy.
And my understanding is that the current generations have less animosity.
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yes except vietnam seems to be aligning somewhat with china, no?
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For Vietnam, fighting the west was just business, fighting the Chinese is tradition. They've been at it since before anyone in Europe crawled out of their caves.
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As a Vietnamese, our government goes with a policy that is flexible, so we don't really align with one side. China just happens to be on the border and is super powerful so the government decides that cooperating is a beneficial thing to do for our economy. Asides from that, fuck em, every single Vietnamese person don't have a positive view about the fucking PRC and their doings in the region.
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could you elaborate? or is there a link for this?
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There are some islands that are contested between them, but not sure where they stand right now.
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Almost an Onion headline.
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... they weren't? Is it really just down to WW2 history and chauvinistic sentiments, which are the only concrete issues the article mentions? Looking in from the outside, that's pretty absurd.
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Why absurd? Not all neighbors are friends. Some barely tolerate each other, others are neutral. And some are straightforward enemies.
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You are much more likely to fight your neighbors than anyone else.
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Japan and South Korea have similar political systems and similar human development indexes, which implies relatively similar sets of values. And they're fairly alone with those in their corner of the world. They both have to deal with being adjacent to Russia, China and North Korea, which aren't exactly the best neighbors. And they face similar social issues, e.g. extremely low birth rates.
In short, it would be very beneficial for them to be friends.
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Let's just say my Filipino wife is no fan of the Japanese due to the horrors they inflicted in WWII. LOL, and she's half Japanese.
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Let's not forget it's convenient for conservative parties of BOTH sides to have some red meat to throw to their country's nationalists. Normal, everyday people scarcely have the time or interaction to have strong feelings about another country whose people they don't encounter that often, independent of history. But when you stir up your constituents to unite against an out-group, you can get them out to the polls and have a nice convenient threat to accuse the other guys of being soft against. They will become real friends when the real threat from China is greater than the political benefit of using each other to keep a united nationalist wing.