Seoul, Beijing Should Boost Understanding and Friendship

The Olympic Games have long provided a forum for countries around the globe to promote harmony, friendship and peace through sports competitions. The Olympics are the largest international festival not only for athletes but also for spectators the world over. South Koreans are showing great interest in the 2008 Summer Games, expecting this event will help boost understanding and friendship with the Chinese people.

The Seoul government also hopes that the festival will contribute to forging closer ties and beefing up cooperation with Beijing. Many Koreans are optimistic that South Korea can overcome differences with other countries under the Beijing Olympics' motto of ``One World, One Dream." Despite the spectacular opening and successful operations, the ongoing Olympics are not without problems.

South Koreans are increasingly disappointed at the fact that the people of the host country are now riding the wave of anti-Korean sentiment. Chinese spectators at the stadiums have often booed South Korean athletes, while cheering their opponents. In the Aug. 16 Korea-Japan baseball match, most Chinese supported the Japanese team. The same thing happened again the next day during the women's table tennis games between Korea and Japan. In the women's archery competitions, the Chinese audience heckled and whistled in a bid to distract Korean players from taking aim.

In many other matches, Chinese spectators applauded Korea's rival teams, revealing their feelings of their neighboring country. This is in stark contrast to their attitude toward the Japanese athletes. Many Chinese are supporting Japanese players in return for their goodwill gestures toward China. Commentators say the Chinese are getting friendlier with Japan, a long-time rival which invaded China and committed atrocities, including the Nanjing Massacre, during World War II.

Some pundits attribute the emerging anti-Korean sentiment to the arrogance of South Koreans who once looked down on the Chinese when they were poor in the early 1990s. They point out that the sentiment has come to surface on the occasion of the Olympics. The Chinese were already angry with Korean Internet users' posting of slanderous stories about China at the time of a devastating earthquake in Sichuan Province in May. And the situation has been aggravated by the Korean television station SBS, which broadcast the embargoed rehearsal of the opening ceremony.

There are growing worries that the anti-Korean wave might surge higher after the Olympics. President Lee Myung-bak plans to discuss this matter with his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao who is to visit Seoul on Aug. 25-26. Lee has promised to find ways to dispel misunderstandings between the two nations. The anti-Korean sentiment has something to do with growing nationalism in China after the Tibet incident. South Korea is also witnessing the rise of nationalism amid history distortions by neighboring countries.

South Korea and China have to overcome their narrow-minded nationalism and open their minds to deepen understanding and friendship as well as to develop strategic partnership relations with each other.