JAPAN-KOREA: World Cup Hosts Win by Easing Some Historical Wounds

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Jul 1 2002 (IPS) - The World Cup has ended with a fifth title for football superpower Brazil, but Japan and South Korea have emerged winners as well from co-hosting the Cup and using it to get over some of historical suspicion and animosity between the neighbours.

Take Lee Hee Jung, for instance, a second-generation Korean and proprietor of a Korean restaurant in Tokyo who wept tears of joy when South Korea’s football team beat the Italians and last month entered the World Cup finals last month.

“I’m happy not only because the Korean team won,” she explained, trying to make herself heard amid a cheering crowd that had packed into her restaurant. “What moves me so much is the sight of ordinary Japanese applauding the victory as enthusiastically we are doing.”

For ethnic Koreans, Japan’s largest minority, the World Cup has been more than an opportunity to watch the best soccer teams in the world. It has even been more than a historic tournament that has seen South Korea go farther than any team from the region has ever had, when it ended up fourth in the Cup after losing to Turkey on Jun. 29.

“The World Cup plays a special role for the Japanese-Koreans,” said 46-year-old Lee, whose tiny Korean barbeque restaurant is in Okubo, well known for its large community of ethnic minorities who have made downtown Tokyo their home.

“For us, the World Cup has been a long-awaited opportunity to develop closer relations with the Japanese,” Lee pointed out.

Bilateral relations have been marred by Japan’s colonisation of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945, and continue to dominate ties today.

For instance, South Korea, along with China, was angered by the Japanese prime minister’s visit in August to a shrine where the Japanese war dead are, Likewise, Japan’s attempts to whitewash its militaristic past in its textbooks are a sore point.

On the surface, analysts point out, the healing power of the World Cup may have indeed helped Lee and Japan’s 300,000 ethnic Koreans, who struggle with official discrimination and racism in the former coloniser of their peninsula.

Tens of thousands of Japanese threw their support behind the South Korean team, watching with admiration and incredulity as the feisty players beat two veteran European competitors, the Italians and the Spanish, to enter the final four of the World Cup.

“Yes, I am cheering the Koreans,” declared a businessman, who was with his friends at a pub in Tokyo the night of Jun. 22, the day the South Koreans played and won against Spain. “Their team is wonderful.”

On the same day, hundreds of young Japanese football fans were out in the streets wearing red T-shirts to match the uniform of the Korean team – dubbed the ‘Red Devils’ — and displaying faces painted with the Korean flag.

Japanese newspapers have also praised the superior ratings of the Korean side, pointing out it was not only the players’ prowess but also their tenacity and skill that gave the team the victories they deserved.

“Here is one of the best teams in the world,” said one sports daily, referring to the entrance of the Korean team into the final four of the Cup.

Korean fans have also won admiration from the Japanese for their unabashed flaunting of national unity. Indeed, some Japanese journalists say that now could be the opportune to examine the lack of such a sentiment among youth here.

But T W Kang, a second-generation Korean, economist, and author of a new book, ‘Japan Korea Alliance vs China’, argues the new display of enthusiasm on both sides could be a temporary one amid the backdrop of the emotion around the World Cup

“Sports is a special issue, and the current enthusiasm is not the basis to judge a bilateral relationship that is fraught with centuries of dispute,” he warned, saying that bilateral ties continue to be sensitive.

Kang, a respected commentator on Japan-Korean issues, says that the recent warming on both sides is restricted to the fluffy aspects of their relationship – such as pop culture, the recent popularity of Korean food in Japan, and the World Cup.

“The demand for Japanese pop stars in South Korea, for instance, is a certainly a step forward, but that is a lot different from the tough problem of building sustainable ties,” he said.

Still, the World Cup has definitely ushered in some long-awaited breakthroughs, others point out.

The arrival of South Korean President Kim Dae Jung to watch the finals between Brazil and Germany on Sunday, and photographs in major newspapers of Kim sitting next to Japanese Emperor Akihito, are considered signs of the mending of old wounds.

An announcement by Kim last week that South Korea would amend a half century’s blockade of Japanese culture into the country, is yet another good sign.

The opportunities for increased exchanges brought by the co-hosting of the World Cup included the meeting in Seoul between Kim and Japan’s Prince Takamado and his wife Princess Hisako, for the opening of the World Cup last month.

That marked the first time a member of the Japanese imperial family — Takamado is a cousin of Emperor Akihito — has talked with a South Korean president.

“I have received so warm a welcome that I have not felt that I am in a foreign country,” Prince Takamado said, adding that there should one day be a visit to South Korea by the Japanese emperor.

“These are epoch-making events. The World Cup has been a success not only from the standpoint of proving the soccer skills of Japanese and Korean players, but also helped propel forward ambiguous Japan-South Korea ties,” said Masahiko Okonogi, a professor at Keio University.