Recently Japan's right wing media, celebrities and organizations have been claiming a controversy theory that K-Pop Korean Wave is a conspiracy plot by the Korean government, the government is sponsoring the growth, and so on.
K-Pop has been greeted with an explosive response and popularity in Europe all over the world, especially in Europe. Japanese right wing's this kind of response is being criticized as a self-isolating, self-preserving action.
Korea has been known for the development in IT, construction, ship building, and car industry, as well as entertainment. For international growth of Korean entertainment industry, Korea has been pursuing openness, investment, and international competitiveness.
Saying that K-Pop, which is hugely popular in Japan right now, is hurting the economy and culture of Japan is not an appropriate thing to say for Japan, as it creates an anti-Korean, anti-hallyu sentiment, and it is not something a developed nation would say.
Perhaps those right wings in Japan should look back at their own entertainment industry's reality instead of creating anti-Korean movements to degrade Korean drama, K-Pop, and other Korean cultures.

http://english.donga.com/srv/service.php3?biid=2011080940068 : SOURCE LINK

They wont be anti-hallyu as long as it keeps making money for them.

I read some articles on this. Apart from the usual conspiracy theories involving the omnipotent Koreans, I can understand some of their sentiments. Fuji TV seems to be showing too much Korean stuff lately and it's one of the biggest Japanese TV stations. This is good for the fans but it may be disturbing for some people at the other end of the spectrum. Although Fuji TV is affiliated with the right-wing newspaper Sankei, it is a private company for profit. From what I read, Korean drama is economically an attractive choice mainly for their daytime telecast. It's affordable to buy them and the related copyright issue is straightforward. It occasionally becomes a jackpot like "Ikemendesune". Fuji also has a music publisher. Every K-pop group works with Japanese music labels in Japan. The Japanese actor complained about this overall trend to Fuji TV in raw words and resigned from his agency. Predictably, the right-leaning people particularly responded to his "persecution" with enthusiasm and the internet rumor mill began running fast over-representing the internet space. For a perspective, the number of protesters were about 2,000. On the other hand, KARA had a fan-meeting with 10,000 people in Yokohama on August 6th. Fuji TV's ratings did not particularly change on the boycott day August 8th. I hope they find the middle point. They can even put a quota.

I care less about K-POP even if they take over the world. As long as it will one day put Asians in the good light, then im all for it. fu-k HOLLYWOOD and their WHITE MASTERS and their RACIST fu-kS.....

If you keep searching for that type of news you will find it. It doesn't reflect the population. I would say that Korea is portrayed in too good a light on most TV shows. The TV audience in japan looks favorably on Korea and is interested in things related to Korea. The producers are quick to capitalize on that.

Example, on a popular Variety show(must point out this was not a news show or documentary) they had a segment that explained Yakiniku(cooked meat) was brought to Japan by Koreans. At best, there is a seed of truth to this, but that's all. Japan has always eaten meat even when laws against eating meat were created in 700A.D. The people in mountain territory ignored the law and continued eating bore, deer, bear etc.. In addition, the law didn't cover mammals of the sea or horses in certain areas. The meat was usually eaten cooked over fire in a shichirin(Japanese small barbecue)or in stews(nabemono). The thing Korea brought to Japan was cooking the meat at the table in a Restaurant.. People in the mountain regions did sit around the Barbecue and cook and eat meat but that was at home, but not at a restaurant. The first cook-meat-at-table restaurant was opened by a Korean some 60 years ago(like 1950). According to her, meat didn't catch on for decades. Her customers instead were mostly cooking fish at the tables. Yakiniku didn't start to flourish until the 70s.

Anyway, because of this TV show, a whole lot of younger Japanese kids are going to believe Yakiniku was brought to Japan by Korea. Not really a ground shattering event, but no more important than the lies the nationalist say. It's wrong to skew the facts period, even if its to portray Korea in a positive light or to try to portray Korea in a bad light.

^ Even without checking detailed facts, barbecue is very generic. It makes sense that it is only the particular "dining style" that's associated with the Korean barbecue. I guess such little inaccuracies or lack of elaboration on TV shows are bountiful. Especially when it comes to health issues, I don't trust TV shows much.

The ego makes people do crazy things. For those who attach their self-esteem to their nationalism, I can totally see how they could find the Korean wave offensive. But at end of the day, they spend all this time suffering and being offended when the Korean wave has no impact on their personal lives whatsoever. Will not having Korean TV shows help them get a better job? Find a better girlfriend? Help them achieve their goals and aspirations? No... and yet they commit huge amounts of time and energy "defending" something that doesn't exist. On the other hand, the Korean wave brings joy to many people who can look past their egos and see it for what it is: entertainment.

Sad, really.

I don't see what the problem is. American TV shows, movies and music are shown all over the world...I don't see people b!tching about that :/

Japanese nationalists need to STFU.

^ Any viewer can complain about their TV programs. It is only that the nationalists jump on the bandwagon and go overboard even claiming they are representing the majority. Sometimes they do seem to be the majority on the internet. That's what's messed up about online boards/comments. Haters are over-represented.

A word about Japanese Nationalist. I think this is as good as anyplace to put down in words what the Nationalist are about.

First, the Nationalist don't care about Korea. This might sound crazy but hear me out. Nationalist are interested in japan and the Japanese citizen. They want to control the Japanese agenda, the mind set - they want the people of Japan to think the way they do. The Nationalist doesn't want to waste his time on Koreans - to a nationalist, Koreans, Chinese, SEA and everyone else is scum. To the nationalist, japan is the greatest people with say Germany coming in at a low second place.

Nationalist don't want Korea or other foreign country influencing the people of Japan so they wage propaganda wars to try and get the Japanese people to hate Korea(and others). They make vids to try and make Koreans look bad and post this on YouTube. Why YouTube? why not just 2ch? It's part of their play book. post an anti-Korean vid on YouTube and you are guaranteed hundreds of anti-Japanese comments posted by angry Koreans. These comments,although retaliatory in nature, are read by English speaking Japanese who get pissed at all the anti-Japanese things they read. Some might start to believe these Nationalist and take these comments back to 2ch and say "Look at what Korean people are saying about us in English".

So reading the posts of Nationalist and spreading their word by bring topics like this on on AF is just what they want you to do. You play right into their hands by getting angry at their posts.

Last point, when watching these propaganda vids, notice the average Japanese citizen avoiding these Nationalist, walking away quickly, crossing the street, or turning their backs on them. The nationalist are a tiny minority that is shrinking day by day. The nationalist doesn't represent the average man. In fact, as for the media, they are too quick to join the band wagon. As said earlier, Korea is in a positive light among most Japanese and their are sizable numbers of fans of Kpop/Kmedia. The audience wants to see positive news and information about Korea and many TV shows are quick to supply this even without carefully researching the subject.( I posted above about a griddle meat example, but their are much more factoids being shown on TV).


If this type of negligent reporting continues from the TV media, this will trigger a way bigger Korean resentment wave than anything the nationalist could posy come up with.

Good point of view. Didn't realize that the Japanese nationalist were focused on influencing the Japanese people rather than foreigners.

The Japanese nationalist may believe that Koreans are falling into their hands by criticizing their slander, but you know what, these Japanese nationalists are doing so much more damage to Japan's image in the internationally community with their narrow-minded focus. They may not care about anything outside Japan, but they are being short-sighted if they think that outside influence does not affect Japan in this age of globalization.

The bottom line is that nationalism is a disease. It's a collective ego that makes people wage wars over false labels and interpretations. In today's age, nationalism will only lead to consequences for your own nation. Those who can rise above nationalism will progress and those who re-enforce it will fall behind. Look at North Korea for example.

This is how I think haters are strongly represented online. When the number of haters begins to increase in a cyber place with inactive or very biased moderation, other people find it unpleasant and leave. Especially when the haters are b!tching about groups they are neutral about, they find no reason to bother arguing with the haters wasting time and energy. The place is then truly occupied by haters who pat each other on the back sharing the same hateful propaganda. Once the critical seed is formed, the number of them snowballs in that place like a magnet. It doesn't help that any loud nutjobs can easily have more presence than, say, level-headed professionals on the internet. All it takes to spam your message everywhere online is time and dedication. Naive people in Group A are upset at the haters in Group B and do the same badmouthing about entire Group B. In turn, immature people in Group B are offended by it and return the favor to Group A. There comes the vicious circle of immaturity. It becomes even more messed up when third partiers jump in this for their own agenda. We can never get rid of all the mess on the internet because the Internet is literally for everyone. However, every mature person should keep some principles in mind. chiuchimu raised a good point regarding this. If anything, when we look at any hateful nationalists, we should realize how creepy and sad they are and be motivated to not sound like them.

I have noticed recently Japanese culture is quite often introduced in Korean entertainment media. They are very positively or interestingly presented on variety or road trip shows and dramas. Reporting about the popular Korean stars in Japan also sheds a positive light. Japanese animation series have been popular, too. Documentaries occasionally introduce some advanced systems in Japan. However, it gets pretty negative when it comes to politics. Recently, there was a current affairs show about the influential right-wing political headquarters named 日本會議 because the three Japanese politicians who tried to visit the island next to the disputed rocks belong to that organization. Korea-Japan relation is complicated due to all these different political factions with different interests. The relation is bound to be multi-faceted. We must live with a grain of salt treating each matter in its own context. The last thing we need is the black and white mentality. We also have to make a distinction between patriotism and aggressive nationalism.