Growing Number of S. Koreans Want to Visit Japan: Poll

This photo taken on July 4, 2019 shows the office of the Japan National Tourism Organization in Seoul. (Yonhap)

SEOUL, March 22 (Korea Bizwire) — More than half of South Koreans want to visit Japan, a survey showed Sunday.

The Japan Press Research Institute conducted a survey of 1,000 people each from South Korea, China, the United States, France, and Thailand to come up with the said results, Kyodo News reported.

Asked if they would like to visit Japan, 51 percent of South Koreans said ‘yes’, up by 16.8 percentage points from last year’s poll.

At 77.8 percent, a strong majority of Thais also wanted to visit Japan, as well as 60.2 percent of French respondents, 51.8 percent of Americans, and 40.3 percent of Chinese.

Thais had the highest proportion of respondents who had positive views towards Japan (89.6 percent), followed by the United States (79.6 percent), France (77.8 percent), China (39.7 percent), and South Korea (31.3 percent).

More Koreans expressed their friendly sentiments towards Japan, up by 8.6 percentage points from last year.

“Korea-Japan relations have found a new hope for improvement following the resignation of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe,” Jiji Press said as it quoted a statement from a researcher who carried out the survey for South Koreans.

M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)