What should Japan learn from South Korea?

https://www.quora.com/What-should-Japan-learn-from-South-Korea

Hidesato Sakakibara, studied at Japan

Answered May 31

A few things come to my mind.

1. Language reform. Rather than increasing the number of kanji (Chinese characters) for usage in Japanese, we should decrease the number. Many if not most of these characters cannot be used in China. De we really need to have our students spend time on this? I don’t think so. I am a strong advocate of returning to having the 1850 kanji rule. The current 2100 characters are not needed. Our students would better spend their time learning others things, such as coding and English.

2. Have more global thinking. As South Korea is a very small country their market is also very small. They have to think globally. Japan does not, but that does not mean that we should not. Take for example air travel. South Korea was clever to build world class airports and give foreign airlines permission left and right to land. They also encourage stop overs and one and two day visits. Only now is Japan starting to do this. We are still behind in that we take too long to give other airlines permission to land. That is changing, but too slow for my tastes.

3. Foster more Japanese soft power in developing countries, even if that means paying for it ourselves. Japanese TV dramas, for example, are very popular but expensive to air for many countries. The Japanese government should subsidize this to have more people enjoy Japanese TV, music, etc. We cannot only always think of the all-mighty yen. The Abe administration to an extent is doing this but not enough.

4. Make ethnic discrimination illegal. South Korea has horrible discrimination, but at least they have this law on the books. It is time for Japan to do the same. We are already an immigrant country. We need to take measures to protect those that have come to live here.

9k views · View Upvoters · View Sharers

Montel Marino

Answered Jun 1

There isn’t much Japan could learn from South Korea, as Japan is better and more sensible in pretty much every area there is.

South Korea has a higher suicide rate and a lower life expectancy.
South Korea is #1 in the world for plastic surgery and self hate.
South Korea even has more obesity than Japan.
South Korea don’t even know what their original religion or culture was.
South Korea’s industry is literally just a copy of the Japanese tech industry, except inferior to Japan’s and Japan has the #1 rank for economic complexity in the world.

South Korea has higher crime rate and also they teach in South Korean classrooms that South Korea was an empire that ruled most of Asia and China, thus the history they teach is more akin to fantasy.

And Japan easily beats South Korea in cuisine as well and their movie industry.

So Japan can’t learn anything from South Korea.

South Korea doesn’t even have 5 well known international corporations. All that have is Samsung, Kia, Hyundai and LG.

Just compare that to Japan and the difference is that South Korea is only akin to a mere prefecture of Japan.
Honda, Toyota, Sony, Hitachi, Panasonic, Canon, Nikon, Mazda, Subaru, Mitsubishi, Nintendo, JVC, Suzuki, Yamaha, Shimano, Nissan, Toshiba, Isuzu, Lexus, Fujifilm, Makita, Ryobi, Denso, Namco, Bandai, Bridgestone, Yokohama, Casio, Citizen, Kawasaki, NEC, Olympus, Pentax, Rinnai, Sanyo, Sega, Seiko, Hino, Wacom, Acura, Pioneer etc.

289 views · View Upvoters

Maxwell-Luis Law

Jun 6

I agree with all others except the movie industry. South Korea produced better quality films than Japan for the past two decades.

Alvira Blackwood

Mon

What kind of ignorant person do you have to be to agree to “Korea doesn’t know their history or religion” and “Korean products are bad ripoffs of Japan’s”? Jesus Christ.

Gyu-Min Jo

Answered Jun 13

As a South Korean, I should say that we are learning from Japan also.

Watching the recent history of Japan, it will happen in Korea also in about 10~30 years. Which means we can predict what kind of serious problems we will face. Because it’s important, we research and learn the failures and successes of Japan. And the citizens learns to get over it.

Back to the title, there is a few things Japan should learn from us. Not much. Because Japan is a highly developed country, they have a lot of things we don’t have. So, let’s get started.

1.Lies

Not much as China does, but almost near to it, watching the TV or internet contents of Japan, a lot of lies that harms their own people are very common. They are too well trained to live in the waves of lies without doubt. From the lies of Japanese government ‘Fukushima is safe’, to the lies of ordinary(it’s hard to call them ordinary but it is….) right wings of Japanese common people ‘Korea/China is willing to force Japan to wipe out from the Japanese island’. Even the TV show tells people that ‘Shinjo Abe is the bridge of peace to make nuclear safe of northeast Asia’, even the world(including North Korea, U.S.A, Russia) regards him as the one who is making dispute.

Hiding the facts can also be lie. Japanese broadcasting company hides what can be not good to Jimintou(where Abe is in). They shows other country’s demonstrations instead of their ones. And when they have problems that cannot be hided, they uses other countries like Korea, Russia, China as if those countries are making serious problems with their ‘peaceful country’, even they were never was.

2.Pretending their country as ‘Wa no kuni(the country of peace)’

I have no Idea how they have came to call their country as like this, but this idea is very dangerous. If you have learned the correct history of northeast Asia, you will know that Japan was and is always full of violence. Japanese pirates was famous for its hugeness and brutality, and some of them became the admirals. The land was was full of wars until the mid age. And when they have made peace in their land, they invaded Korean peninsula, ended up with killing about 4 million people, including about 2 million civilians in very cruel way.

After they opened up their doors to America and came to Meiji period, they once more became the nightmare of northeast Asia. The Europeans were brutal to their colonized country’s people. That’s what we call unforgivable. But Japanese empire, they were way more evil then Nazi. I know that comparing who was more brutal is useless, but I’m sure that all the historians will agree that Japanese empire was most cruel in world history. Because it will take about more than 1000 pages to tell every tortures and massacres, and other war crimes, I won’t tell here.

The point is, Japan is hiding their history and truth about themselves even very moment. They even hides it from their textbooks. Most of them believes the world war 2 between Japan and U.S.A has started from America’s first attack. They never knows the pearl harbor. Even this moment, no can deny that Japan is one of main country that is destroying the peace of northeast Asia. Japanese people never knows what their government is doing .

So, let’s get back to why it’s dangerous. Since Japanese people cannot learn the true history from their school, they regards as all the problem is because of other countries like China, Korea, Russia, U.S.A and etc… They regards other countries as peace breaking troublemakers. Which means their right wings regards Korea, China and Russia as an ‘enemy’. So they don’t hesitate to make fake news to instigate their people. They don’t hesitate for massacre. They justify themselves as peace lovers and guardians of ‘Wa no kuni’.

They have to learn their history. Like Korea does. We learn what we have done to Vietnamese civilians. And must know that their country was never in peace.

394 views

Michael Dougan, Cafe Owner at Michael's Cafe American (2017-present)

Answered May 31

1. Korean-influenced BBQ reform, and hot sauce reform, should be Japan’s top priority.
2. Korean-influenced Quality Television programming reform. South Korea is the leading producer of multi-part historic epics and costume dramas, something Japan used to do, but no longer makes an effort. This should be a priority, too. Many Japanese entertainment consumers know more about Korean history than they do their own, because Korean dramas are so plentiful, engaging, and popular. Japan’s entertainment industry is a shadow of what it could be, reduced to talk shows, food shows, and talk shows about food. Japan can do better than this, and south Korea’s success in this arena provides a good example.

Kuwata Kenji (桑田 健司) · Add Credential

Answered just now

There is nothing Japan can learn from Korea.
Currently, Japanese-Japanese is keenly aware that Fukuzawa Yukikichi wrote in 1885 in his article "Datsu-A Ron (escape from Asia)".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=z_v5r_4xxHQ