Korean people’s perception of Japan can be summarized into antipathy against imperial exploitation, favorable impression of Japanese economy and culture, and ignorance of Japanese politics and military. This is less a natural consequence than the result of influence by discourses on Japan in the Cold War Era.
With the conclusion of Korea-Japan Treaty in 1965 without apology or compensation from Japan, the consensus “Japan is coming again” spread widely among Korean intellects. In particular, Koreans who had experienced the colonial rule of Japan had strong wariness against imperialistic economic invasion of Japan.
However, the urgent question was how to cope with it if Japan comes again. Thus, after the conclusion of the Korea-Japan Treaty, Korean people expressed a strong desire to understand changes in Japan since the 2nd World War along with their wariness of Japan. This desire was largely satisfied by Edwin O. Reischauer’s writings.
Reischauer presented the model of Japanese modernization, which was achieved without revolution, as a textbook for Third World countries. Accepting Reischauer’s theory of Japanese modernization, Korea began to think separately Japanese imperialistic invasion and its modernization process, which had been like the two sides of a coin. Reischauer’s theory of Japanese modernization moved Korean people’s perception of Japan, which had concentrated on imperialistic invasion, to the issue of modernization, and this provided an intellectual background for the emergence of the ‘economic animal’ theory in the future.
As Japan professed the principle of separation of economy and politics as its external policy and promoted economic cooperation with East Asia, contacting communist countries such as the Soviet Union, China and North Korea, some researchers understood the pursuit of ‘economic benefits’ as Japanese national interest and branded Japan as ‘an economic animal.’ Through this, Japanese militaristic expansion was covered up and only the outcomes of economic growth were spotlighted.
‘The economic animal theory’ regarded Japan as a being thoroughly subordinate to the Far East policy of the U.S. and, by doing so, it overlooked the expansion of the political and military influence of Japan as argued by ‘the dominant power theory.’ Faced with the growth of Japan as a military superpower, Korean people confront the task of narrowing the gap between their perception of Japan and the actuality of contemporary Japan. This will be the process of overcoming the influence of American discourses on Japan and establishing a subjective viewpoint of Japan.