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South Korean students flock to Japan

japantimes.co.jp

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Re: South Korean students flock to Japan

#61

Post by donpark »

edflsafoiewq wrote: post #22
jpatokal wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically, Korea was repeatedly invaded by Japan. More recently, Korea was a Japanese colony between 1910 and 1945, during which the Japanese ruled with an iron fist and did their best to destroy Korean identity by forcing people to take Japanese names etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_under_Japanese_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Japan%E2%80%93Korea...

Which certainly explains why Korea doesn't like Japan, but why does Japan seem to dislike Korea so much?

Much of it can be blamed on propaganda driven by economic decline and political scapegoating. While Korean music, drama, and movies are popular in Japan, consumers are mostly women. Among small but growing and very vocal population of Japanese men, Korea-bashing books and manga are popular. Later trend is not unrelated to continuing economic decline of Japan. And Japanese politicians are leveraging and fueling that trend to divert the blame.

Re: South Korean students flock to Japan

#62

Post by bdowling »

masklinn wrote: post #46
jpatokal wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both countries have low birthrates, but Japan is far enough along the labor shortage curve that unemployment has been essentially eradicated in Japan. From the friendly article: According to Statistics Korea, the national statistics office, the unemployment rate last year for people aged between 15 and 29 was 9.5 percent, compared with 3.8 percent overall and 3.6 percent for Japanese 15 to 24. Also, Japan has a vocal…

> unemployment has been essentially eradicated in Japan Much of that is the surprising amount of minor busywork the country uses instead of welfare support e.g. multiple people doing circulation around a minor bit of roadwork when other countries would use traffic signs or temporary traffic lights. This is mostly unreliable contract and part-time work. Japan has fairly high rates of relative and working poverty, with…

For comparison, in 2010 the U.S. had 15.1% of its population living under the poverty line. [0]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_threshold

Re: South Korean students flock to Japan

#63

Post by awl130 »

This article is laughably wrong (probably a puff piece to entice Korean students to work in Japan). The truth is exactly the opposite: there are fewer Koreans in Japan every year (as measured by foreign residents in Japan -- this includes work and student visas). The fastest rising immigrants to Japan from 2015-2018 are in descending order[1]:

Vietnam Cambodia Uzbekistan Myanmar Sri Lanka

South Korea comes in dead last, having DECLINED by 10% during the same period.

The truth is that as soon as Korea became a developed country, having joined the OECD in the 90s, immigration to Japan slowed to a trickle, precisely for the historical reasons that you might suspect.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#Foreign_...

Re: South Korean students flock to Japan

#64

Post by throwmeback »

pojzon wrote: post #30
nemonemo wrote: post #25

South Korean here. My anecdata: some of my friends went to Japan for advanced degrees. Most of them came back within a couple of years after their study. 10x or more people around me went to US. The majority of them are still in the country after a few years. Such tendency was remarkable to me, given the difficulty of learning English and relative ease of learning Japanese by Koreans. There is one thing I can't under…

Younger people can think about their future too. Anyone should be free to seek better future for him/herself. Aging society is a big issue. When i was studing, alot of thought went into "my county has a lot of internal issues that doesnt seem to be solved anytime soon - mby its better to jump the ship before it sinks".

Those are my daily thoughts about my country. The problem is that if I move away, all my friends will still be there and be miserable, which makes a tough decision to make.

Re: South Korean students flock to Japan

#65

Post by theredbox »

nemonemo wrote: post #25

South Korean here. My anecdata: some of my friends went to Japan for advanced degrees. Most of them came back within a couple of years after their study. 10x or more people around me went to US. The majority of them are still in the country after a few years. Such tendency was remarkable to me, given the difficulty of learning English and relative ease of learning Japanese by Koreans. There is one thing I can't under…

How come it's so easy for koreans to go to the US ?

Re: South Korean students flock to Japan

#66

Post by sasaf5 »

jpatokal wrote: post #24
sasaf5 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan demands the issue to be "settled" or "forgotten" after mulling quick apologies. Imagine Germany demanding that the Holocaust be forgotten.

Japan and South Korea signed an agreement in 1965 that was supposed to settle all financial claims. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Basic_Relations_betw...

This agreement is about property claims, not about war crimes against civilians.

Re: South Korean students flock to Japan

#67

Post by jpatokal »

sasaf5 wrote: post #66
jpatokal wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan and South Korea signed an agreement in 1965 that was supposed to settle all financial claims. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Basic_Relations_betw...

This agreement is about property claims, not about war crimes against civilians.

The agreement is about "property and claims" between the two states. Of course, individuals can and have sued various Japanese entities, some successfully.

Re: South Korean students flock to Japan

#68

Post by distantaidenn »

According to some sources (Bloomberg) South Korea is currently the most innovative country in the world, and having spent significant time there, I wholeheartedly agree.

Despite the mythos surrounding Japan espoused by some ill-informed westerners, while it is a beautiful country, there is no benefit in moving from Korea to Japan. Japan, while it's my current home, is well past its heyday.

This isn't to say it won't return, but the current climate speaks otherwise.

This is a pure fluff piece.

Re: South Korean students flock to Japan

#69

Post by badpun »

throwmeback wrote: post #64
pojzon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Younger people can think about their future too. Anyone should be free to seek better future for him/herself. Aging society is a big issue. When i was studing, alot of thought went into "my county has a lot of internal issues that doesnt seem to be solved anytime soon - mby its better to jump the ship before it sinks".

Those are my daily thoughts about my country. The problem is that if I move away, all my friends will still be there and be miserable, which makes a tough decision to make.

Lots of people move abroad for a couple years, save a lot of money there, build strong CVs and then come back to their home country. With the saved money, they can easily start a life (buy house/flat without debt etc.) and strong CV presumably allows them to get a decent job. Of course, it is only suitable in countries that are at least somewhat developed, don't have wars etc.

Re: South Korean students flock to Japan

#70

Post by neoflex »

wodenokoto wrote: post #59
nemonemo wrote: post #25

South Korean here. My anecdata: some of my friends went to Japan for advanced degrees. Most of them came back within a couple of years after their study. 10x or more people around me went to US. The majority of them are still in the country after a few years. Such tendency was remarkable to me, given the difficulty of learning English and relative ease of learning Japanese by Koreans. There is one thing I can't under…

> some of my friends went to Japan for advanced degrees. Most of them came back within a couple of years after their study. 10x or more people around me went to US. The majority of them are still in the country after a few years. My thinking is that Japanese and Korean work culture is quite similar. So if you want to live in that culture, why not do it closer to your family? However, if you get smitten by a more west…

>However, if you get smitten by a more western lifestyle in the US or Europe, it will be very hard to return home.

Anecdotal, but I can confirm. I work for a Japanese bank in NYC that has a lot of Japanese expats. A few weeks prior a new expat came over and he was in awe of being able to start work around 8:50 and leave at 6:00, and how easy it is to approach the managers. Meanwhile, the expats that have been in NYC for a while are dreading returning to Tokyo.

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