hankyoreh

TOKYO - The 'Korean wave' of popular culture has waned in Japan, and anti-Korean sentiment is now at a record high in the last twenty years.

The survey of public opinion on diplomatic relations between South Korea and Japan was conducted by the Cabinet Office of Japan and announced on December 9. The survey showed that 57.1 percent of respondents answered that the relations with South Korea are 'not good.' This is an increase by 6.2 percentage points over the last survey, and higher than that of 1996, at 54.9 percent. In fact, the results signal the worst ever relations between the two countries since the history of this survey, which began in 1986.

The survey was conducted from October 5 to 15, and asked 1,704 Japanese citizens their opinion. The answers that said South Korea-Japan relationship is good stood at 34.4 percent, an historic low. The number of Japanese citizens who felt a certain amount of intimacy toward South Korea dropped by 2.6 percentage points from last year, to 48.5 percent of respondents.

Experts say that Japanese intimacy toward Korea grew exponentially during the co-hosting of 2002 FIFA World Cup and the recent 'Korean wave' popularity fever, but the aggravated confrontation by South Korea surrounding former Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro's visit to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, where memorials for soldiers deemed war criminals are housed, as well as the ownership of the Dokdo islets - which Japan calls Takeshima - cast a chill over relations.

At the same time, the number of South Korean movies premiered in Japan this year sank to only the half the number of last year due to poor box office showings. Two prominent Korean blockbusters, "The Host" and "Welcome to Dongmakgol," earned only about 300 million Japanese Yen (US$2.6 million), far below anticipated levels and a striking contrast with last year, in which two of the many South Korean movies released in Japan raked in almost 3 billion Yen.

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