Close encounters with Japanese
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By Yang Dong-hee
It was 20 years after the liberation of the country from Japanese occupation that Korea and Japan established diplomatic relations under the Treaty of Basic Relations in December 1965. A half century just passed away with deep scars in the hearts of Koreans left unhealed.
Under the current unfavorable circumstances of the two neighboring countries facing the 50th anniversary of the bilateral treaty, I now look back on my personal experiences with the Japanese over the past three decades.
According to a 2014 BBC World Service Poll, 13 percent of Japanese view South Korea’s influence positively, with 37 percent expressing a negative view, while 15 percent of South Koreans view Japanese influence positively, with 79 percent responding negatively. This makes South Korea, after China, the country having the second-most-negative perception of Japan in the world.
While working for a Korean newspaper in New York and Philadelphia in the 1980s, I invited many Korean singers to perform in the U.S., including Cho Yong-pil, who went to the same high school as me. Many Korean and Japanese fans came to see his show at Madison Square Garden and Carnegie Hall in New York and Caesar’s Maximus Theater in Atlantic City, N.J.
Dubbed “The Singing Emperor of Asia,” Cho Yong-pil came to Caesar’s with a Japanese band instead of his own Korean band for three shows over a weekend in November 1989. Each member of the Japanese band spent the three full days with ultimate dedication to Cho in every detailed matter. They didn’t allow themselves to spend any time on personal matters, and seemed to think ― which is quite natural ― they were on the clock every minute of the tour.
On his departing day, I was more surprised to see all 10 band members already in the lobby after checking out. The group’s checkout time was 11:00 a.m., but they said they had come down at 10.
“It’s Monday morning and we don’t want our boss (they called Cho ‘boss’) to wait even for a minute,” said the bandleader. Cho told me he first hired this all-Japanese band for a Japan tour two years ago, adding “the difference (between the Korean band and the Japanese band) is like the sky and the earth.”
Cho added, “It never fails for my road manager to have to go upstairs and wake up one or two members who still have a hangover from the previous night’s party when I travel with a Korean band.”
I lived in a 22-story studio at Colden Tower, Flushing, New York, for my first year living in the U.S. in 1981. Some 80 percent of the tenants were Japanese businessmen and their families and the rest were well-to-do Koreans and Chinese. The building was a landmark of Flushing in the 1980s and the tenants were mostly well educated.
The Spanish superintendent told me one day how to tell the nationality of a passenger in the all-Asian building. He said it was easiest to tell the difference in elevators.
“If the tenant remains silent and faces slightly downward, he or she is Japanese for sure. Korean and Chinese do not care about other co-riders. They talk loudly.” During my stay there, I could observe the attitude of Asians in our elevators, and the superintendent was unfortunately correct.
The successful export of Hyundai’s first-generation compact cars to America in 1984 gave an enormous amount of joy to most Koreans living there. At that time, what I noticed most from my American friends how they pronounced Hyundai to sound more like “Hon-die,” not far off from Honda, even mistaking it for another Japanese car company. Thus, admit it or not, but Hyundai’s early success in the U.S. owes a lot to the successes of Toyota, Mazda, Nissan and Honda.
Years later, back in Seoul, I won an open bid to represent all the marketing endeavors for the Korean Ladies Professional Golf Association (KLPGA) in 1999.
After a couple of sincere letters, I went to Japan and managed to persuade Japanese legend and JLPGA president Hisako Higuchi to establish an annual Korea-Japan goodwill tournament. I was a total stranger to her and Korea did not have many female golfers to compete, other than Pak Se-ri, compared to Japan’s female golfers, but she listened very carefully to me and we reached a deal to hold the annual Korea-Japan Ladies Golf Tournament every December.
This humble-hearted Japanese woman, now 70, still remains the first Asian-born major champion of the U.S. LPGA Championship in 1977.
My relationship with Japanese female golfers continued for four more years in Guam, where I organized the annual Korea-Japan Charity Golf Tournament for North Korean Children. Twenty volunteer players each from the KLPGA and JLPGA, 20 businessmen, 20 reporters and 20 entertainers from each country were invited to Guam every year for the three-day charity golf event.
Mingling with celebrities from entertainment, sports, business and journalistic circles for five days of golfing, charity events and parties was enough for me to pick up on the contrasting characteristics of the two nations.
Korean celebrities would casually ask me to rearrange flight schedules, to add one or two more rounds of golf, to arrange a private taxi service, to rearrange free hotel rooms and various other favors.
The Japanese attendants, however, did not ask me a single favor considering my busy schedule as organizer, despite my repeated queries if everything was okay. Afterwards, some of the Japanese golfers sent nice handwritten cards of gratitude to me, in Korean, and to the sponsor, the director of the Guam International Airport Authority, in English. The thoughtful ― and always busy ― lady golfers wrote in the letter that they managed to find kind Koreans in Japan who would write the letters for them. How sweet.
I have many more anecdotes to share. My direct and indirect encounters with Japanese people over the past 30 years in Korea, Japan, the U.S. and Guam have given me nothing but heart-warming, long-lasting and learning experiences with human nature. It was nothing like a "close encounter with a third kind.’’
The writer worked as a reporter for The Korea Times and the Hankook Ilbo-New York, and as a stringer correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. He was the first managing director in Korea of the U.S.-based International Management Group (IMG). He can be contacted at dhyang28@gmail.com.