Korea–Japan Relations Explained: Why the Rivalry Goes Beyond Sports

Some time ago, I watched a foreign travel YouTuber who had visited Japan and was now traveling in South Korea. At one point, he asked a simple question: “Is there a rivalry between Korea and Japan?”

My answer would be yes. When South Korea and Japan meet in football or baseball, many Koreans care about the result more intensely than they would in an ordinary international match. I would not compare it with some of Europe’s most heated football rivalries, where fan violence can become part of the story, but there is certainly a feeling in Korea that losing to Japan hurts a little more.

I can recognize that feeling in myself too. I do not dislike Japan, and I have enjoyed Japanese culture since I was young, but when Korea and Japan compete, part of me still thinks, “At least I don’t want us to lose to Japan.”

The more I think about why that feeling exists, the harder it becomes to explain it as an ordinary rivalry between two neighboring countries. Culture, economic competition, war, colonial rule, and historical memory are all mixed together.

I Grew Up Surrounded by Japanese Culture

One reason Korea–Japan relations cannot be reduced to mutual dislike is that Japanese culture and products have been familiar to many Koreans for a very long time.

When I was a child, I watched Mazinger Z. The Japanese character Koji Kabuto became “Swoedori” in the Korean version, and I remember the Korean theme song far better than I remember thinking about where the animation had originally come from. I also watched Eagle Five Brothers, the Korean title for the Japanese anime Science Ninja Team Gatchaman. To a child, they simply felt like familiar TV cartoons.

Japanese consumer products were just as desirable. I remember the famous Zojirushi rice cookers that Koreans often called “elephant rice cookers” because of the company’s elephant logo. They were popular products to bring back from Japan at a time when many Japanese consumer goods were not freely imported into South Korea.

Sony electronics were another symbol of that era. I believe it was sometime around the mid-1980s when my father bought me a genuine Sony Walkman. The exact year is difficult for me to remember now, but what makes this memory special is that I still own that same Walkman today.

For me, it is more than an old electronic device. It reminds me of a period when Japanese technology seemed advanced and desirable to many Korean consumers, even while political and cultural restrictions between the two countries remained.

South Korea did not begin formally opening its market to Japanese popular culture until 1998. Long before that official opening, however, Japanese manga, animation, music, electronics, and other products were already reaching Korean consumers through a variety of channels.

This is why I find it misleading when Korea and Japan are described simply as two countries that dislike each other. I grew up watching Japanese animation and using Japanese electronics. Cultural familiarity and historical resentment have existed side by side for decades.

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Why This Rivalry Carries Historical Weight

Conflict between Korea and Japan did not begin in the twentieth century. Korea experienced major Japanese invasions during the Imjin War and Jeongyu War of the late sixteenth century, but the history that most directly shapes modern Korean attitudes toward Japan is the period of Japanese colonial rule from 1910 to 1945.

For my generation, colonial rule is not something I personally experienced, but neither does it feel like ancient history. It belongs to the lives of people only a few generations before us, and the testimony of victims of forced mobilization and the Japanese military “comfort women” system continued into our own time.

Korea still marks the end of colonial rule every August 15 on Gwangbokjeol, Korea’s National Liberation Day. Places such as Seodaemun Prison also preserve the records of Koreans who were imprisoned and punished for resisting colonial rule. These are not abstract diplomatic disputes; they are part of the way Korea publicly remembers its modern history.

The two countries also emerged from the mid-twentieth century under very different circumstances. Japan itself suffered enormous destruction during the final years of World War II. Tokyo and other cities were devastated by air raids, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by atomic bombs, and the country had to rebuild after defeat.

But after the war, Japan was reconstructed under the U.S.-led occupation, and as the Cold War intensified, American policy increasingly emphasized Japan’s economic recovery. When the Korean War began in 1950, Japan became an important supply and service base for United Nations forces, and wartime procurement gave its recovering economy an additional boost.

At exactly the same time, the war itself was destroying Korea. The Korean Peninsula became the battlefield, cities and infrastructure were devastated, millions of people were displaced, and the division of the country became deeply entrenched.

By the time I was growing up, Japan was already a much wealthier country with globally admired electronics and consumer brands. The Zojirushi rice cooker and the Sony Walkman I remember from childhood were part of that everyday reality.

But I do not think Korea’s sense of rivalry with Japan can be explained simply by economic difference or by a desire to “catch up.” For many Koreans, competition with Japan carries an additional historical weight. Because the country that once colonized Korea later stood beside it as a powerful economic neighbor, sporting events, technology, culture, and even economic comparisons could take on an emotional meaning they would not necessarily have with another country. That is closer to what I mean when I say, “I don’t particularly want Korea to lose to Japan.”

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Why the Rising Sun Flag Is Not Just a Design to Koreans

I understand that the sunburst design itself did not begin with Japanese imperialism. Images of a rising sun and radiating sunlight existed in Japanese visual culture long before the modern Japanese empire, and similar designs have appeared in other parts of the world as well. But symbols do not keep only the meaning they had before history happened to them.

The Rising Sun Flag became a military flag of Imperial Japan and was carried by Japanese forces during the period of imperial expansion in Asia. For people in countries that were colonized or invaded by Imperial Japan, that history became part of what the flag meant.

In South Korea, the flag is therefore widely associated with Japanese militarism and colonial rule. Research examining South Korean perceptions of the Rising Sun Flag has also found that Koreans connect the symbol with Japanese imperialism and frequently compare its emotional meaning with the Nazi swastika.

I think an important distinction is necessary here. The Rising Sun Flag and the Nazi Hakenkreuz do not have identical historical origins, and their legal status today is different. But from the perspective of people whose countries suffered under Japanese imperial expansion, the emotional comparison is not difficult to understand.

The swastika existed in many cultures for thousands of years before Nazi Germany adopted it. Its earlier meanings did not prevent Nazi use from fundamentally changing how that symbol is received in much of Europe today. In a similar way, telling Koreans that the rising-sun design existed before Japanese imperialism does not erase the period when a military version of that design accompanied Japan’s expansion across Asia.

Germany today places strict legal limits on the public use of symbols associated with unconstitutional Nazi organizations, with exceptions for purposes such as historical education, art, and research. Japan, by contrast, has not prohibited the Rising Sun Flag, and a related design remains in official use by the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force.

That difference matters to me. I do not believe the meaning of a historical symbol should be decided only by the people who continue to use it. The memory of those who saw that symbol arrive with an occupying or invading military matters too.

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Apologies Matter, but So Does What Comes After Them

It would be inaccurate to claim that Japan has never apologized for its wartime past. The 1993 Kono Statement, for example, acknowledged the direct or indirect involvement of the Japanese military in the establishment and management of military comfort stations and stated that many women were recruited against their will through coercion and other means. It also expressed apology and remorse to the victims. Other Japanese prime ministers and governments have also issued statements expressing remorse or apology for Japan’s colonial rule and wartime actions.

For me, however, the existence of an apology is not the end of the question. What matters is whether the historical understanding behind that apology continues consistently afterward. If political figures later minimize coercion, historical descriptions become weaker, or territorial claims connected to the colonial period continue to be repeated, people in the former victim country naturally begin to ask what the earlier apology actually means in practice.

This concern is not limited to old disputes. In March 2026, South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs formally protested newly authorized Japanese high-school textbooks, saying that descriptions of forced-labor victims and military “comfort women” diluted their coercive nature and that the textbooks again included Japanese sovereignty claims over Dokdo. The ministry explicitly called for history education consistent with the spirit of Japan’s own previous apologies and expressions of remorse.

When I meet or hear about Japanese people who genuinely do not understand why Koreans react so strongly to the Rising Sun Flag or colonial history, my first thought is not that they personally committed some wrongdoing. I wonder what they were taught. People cannot know a history they were never given a meaningful opportunity to learn. If Korean experiences of colonial rule are presented only briefly or without the perspective of those who suffered under it, it is easier to conclude that Korean anger is exaggerated or irrational.

That gap in historical understanding can also create space for anti-Korean rhetoric. I do not think such voices represent Japanese society as a whole, but when people lack the historical context behind Korean reactions, distorted explanations can become easier to believe.

South Korea has its own unresolved questions about the colonial era as well. I discuss one of them in my article on pro-Japanese collaborators in Korea, including why the consequences of collaboration remained controversial long after liberation.

The Statues of Peace are another part of this struggle over memory. To me, their purpose is not to accuse ordinary Japanese people living today of crimes committed before they were born. They preserve the memory of women who suffered through a wartime system and ask later generations not to erase what happened.

The Statue of Peace installed in Glendale, California, shows how this historical debate has moved beyond Korea and Japan. Attempts were made to remove the monument through litigation, but the statue remained, turning a bilateral historical issue into a broader discussion about public memory, wartime human rights, and who gets to decide what should be remembered.

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Culture Has Become Closer Even While History Remains Difficult

All of this can make Korea–Japan relations sound relentlessly hostile, but everyday life tells a very different story. Koreans travel to Japan in enormous numbers, while Japanese visitors come to Korea for food, shopping, music, beauty, and popular culture. Anime, Japanese food, games, and music are familiar in Korea, while K-pop, Korean dramas, fashion, cosmetics, and food have become deeply visible in Japan.

In 2025, the two countries marked the 60th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations. Their governments held joint events, including commemorative receptions, special immigration arrangements, and cultural exchanges, while people-to-people travel between the two countries was already at historically high levels.

This is the Korea–Japan relationship that I recognize most clearly in everyday life. Political disputes can suddenly become intense, while ordinary Koreans may be booking a weekend trip to Osaka or Fukuoka at the same time. Japanese young people can enjoy Korean singers and dramas without thinking about diplomacy every time they do so.

Japanese culture was already part of my childhood, long before relations became as open as they are today. The old Sony Walkman that I still keep is a very personal reminder of that. That is why I do not think historical criticism and cultural affection have to cancel each other out.

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I Do Not Hate Japan, but I Do Not Want History Erased

I do not dislike Japanese people simply because they are Japanese. I see no reason to blame a kind person living today for something a grandparent or great-grandparent’s generation did before that person was born. I also have no desire to erase the Japanese things I have enjoyed throughout my life. Japanese cartoons were part of my childhood, Japanese electronics fascinated me, and ordinary contact between Koreans and Japanese today is far easier and more natural than it once was.

But that does not mean I think reconciliation requires forgetting history. To me, genuine reconciliation means being able to learn honestly about what one’s own country did, acknowledge that wrongdoing without repeatedly minimizing it, and still meet the people living in the other country today without treating them as inherited enemies.

That is especially important because Korea and Japan are already so close. Their people travel, work, study, consume each other’s culture, and face many of the same regional challenges. The relationship is no longer defined only by what governments say to each other.

So if I return to the travel YouTuber’s original question, yes, I think Korea and Japan are rivals. We notice each other in sports, technology, culture, and economic performance, and I admit that I still do not particularly enjoy seeing Korea lose to Japan. But the rivalry carries more weight than an ordinary contest between neighbors because historical memory is still inside it.

I believe Korea and Japan can become closer than they are today. In many ways, ordinary people are already moving in that direction faster than politics. But I do not think the best path forward is to hide the painful parts of history so that nobody feels uncomfortable. The stronger relationship, in my view, is one in which both countries can know the past accurately, preserve the memory of those who suffered, and still choose not to hate the people living across the sea today.

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