President Moon Jae-in (R) walking away after shaking hands with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at a convention center in Osaka, the venue for a G-20 summit on June 28, 2019. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Sept. 14 (Korea Bizwire) — With the relation between South Korea and Japan assessed as having nose-dived to the lowest point since diplomatic ties were formed in 1965, a recent survey showed that the citizens of both countries have low levels of trust in each other’s leader.
According to a survey conducted by the Korea Press Foundation with 1,742 people aged from 20 to 69 years of age (consisting of 1,000 South Koreans and 742 Japanese), the Japanese citizens turned out to have very low trust in South Korean President Moon Jae-in, while the Korean citizens also had very low trust in Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who recently announced his decision to step down.
The survey revealed that 79.2 percent of Japanese said they don’t trust Moon, while 93.7 percent of Koreans said they don’t trust Abe.
The citizens of both countries also turned out to have very low level of favorable feelings for each other’s country and people.
Among Japanese citizens, only 10.8 percent said they have favorable feelings for South Korea, dwarfed by those (56.7 percent) who said they don’t have favorable feelings for South Korea.
Among South Koreans, the share of those who said they have favorable feelings for Japan stood at 15 percent, far lower than 64.2 percent who said they don’t.
Only 11.1 percent of Japanese said they have favorable feelings for South Koreans, while 51.4 percent said they don’t.
Among South Koreans, 17.5 percent said they have favorable feelings for Japanese people, but 48.6 percent said they don’t.
As such, South Korean citizens turned out to have higher unfavorable emotion against the Japanese country rather than against the Japanese people.
J. S. Shin (js_shin@koreabizwire.com)
