Misunderstanding between Neighbors

Some Japanese are being excited in the South Korean drama. I want to talk about these mass hysterical "boom" often happened in Japan, in another opportunity. This time, I'm going to describe a serious divergence of information between South Korea and Japan.

There is different understanding of historical recognition between South Korea and Japan. Both countries' governments have not changed their claim in order to keep their national interests. And also now, strong anti-Japan feeling continues to exist among many Koreans.

In South Korea, though importing Japanese cultural things had been forbidden, Japanese anime had been exported to South Korea ahead of movies or Music CDs, because some of the anime had stories of other countries than Japan and some had the stateless atmosphere.
And in these years, Japanese culture was allowed officially in Korea. But the scenes that remind Koreans of the Japanese culture in anime are still "censored". An anime "Ghost-IGO-OU" has aired in South Korea with characters KIMONO being blurred by the digital effect, because the KIMONO is "too Japanese" for some Koreans.
http://japanese.joins.com/html/2004/0603/...(Japanese)

However, after the program started, blames have been thrown at the part which was not able to be expected. It is that they (South Korean TV station KBS) made all the clothes of a main character 'Charan' white, and it made the people feel unnatural whenever they watch it.
"It was weird that only Charan's head seemed like floating". "It is meaningless that you erased all the clothes which symbolize the character... If it was such a thing, you should not have aired it at all." Many sentences which describe dissatisfaction were sent on the KBS bulletin board.

This is because the Korean TV stations are sensitive to anti-Japan protests. (As for Japan, no digital effect covers up the Korean drama.) It is unfair to hide the information about our culture because it must only increase the misunderstanding. That makes us suspect that the Korean media are not wanting to report about Japan exactly and want to continue to agitate anit-Japan feelings. (We have also many shameful things to be known for, though...)

In July 2003, the Japanese fishing boat "KOYOMARU No.18" and the South Korean cargo ship "Heung-A Jupiter" collided, one of the KOYOMARU crew died, and 6 crew went missing.
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/archive/200307/02/...
Each Japanese media reported that the cargo ship was registered in Panama, but they did not tell that it was a South Korean ship.
Four days after, the South Korean ship "Korex Kunsan" and the ship "KARASHIMA" of Japanese Fisheries Agency collided while KARASHIMA was searching for the missing crew of KOYOMARU.
In both of the accidents, these South Korean ships escaped from the scene of the collision, and did not participate in the rescue of the victims. Some days later, search of the missing crew was closed, and the navigation officer of "Heung-A Jupiter" was prosecuted since he admitted his error.
It is wonder that almost no media told us the circumstances of these cases after their first news. So, probably, most of people of Japan and South Korea may not know about these cases.
I learned of this on the Internet. Some people personally investigated these cases and summarized the outline to their web site.
http://www.geocities.co.jp/WallStreet-Stock/1917/ (Japanese)

Compared with this, in the accident of "EHIME MARU" which occurred in 2001, many detailed reports have been added until now. In short, we cannot help thinking that the Japanese media are regulated not to report the cases by the Koreans, or they are too guarded to Korea or the Korean society in Japan.
The Japanese media are also too sensitive to anti-Japan protests of Korean people. They are afraid of being censured for discrimination by Korea if they report the cases by the Koreans, even if they are the truth. Nevertheless, the "friendly" reports of Korea are persistently repeated. Some people have began to feel the incongruity of that.

Many of Japanese people are only fascinated by the Korean drama, and they don't know that the media of Japan and South Korea are manipulating information each other. Some people are thinking that this "South Korean boom" will connect to the Japan-South Korea friendship.
But I think we have to find out and stop concealment of information in order to trust each other.