This really isn't surprising:

Japanese teenagers are more familiar with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il than his South Korean counterpart President Roh Moo-hyun, a survey says. Kengo Ozu, a member of Japan's History Institute of Teachers, announced the results of his survey on the image of South Korea among middle and high school and college students in Japan at an annual seminar on history textbooks about South Korea and Japan. He asked a total of 236 -- 91 third-year middle school students in Chiba Prefecture, 76 first year high school students in Kanagawa Prefecture and 69 students at universities in Tokyo what they know about South Korea.

When asked who the president of South Korea is, four middle school students (4 percent), 12 high school students (16 percent) and 42 college students (61 percent) gave the correct answer. But among middle school students, five answered Kim Jong-il, one more than had the right answer. Asked, "Who is the current leader of North Korea?" however, 95 percent hit the jackpot. Ozu said this was because the issue of Japanese abduction victims and other negative reports about the North deeply imprinted the image of "Kim Jong-il, the tyrant" in the minds of Japanese people.

Considering the threat Kim Jong-il poses to Japan and the attention he is given because of it, this really isn't surprising.* I'm willing to bet more American students would know who Kim Jong-il is compared to the President of Mexico.* Actually who is the President of Mexico this week?* Is there still three of them?


Anyway this is something I found interesting from the survey:

The survey also revealed that respondents believed Korea to be "stubborn and graceless" in dealing with Japanese territorial claims to the Dokdo islets and felt Japan made a mistake by invading the nation, but I can't understand why it educates its children to hate Japan. They also felt nationalist movements in Korea are pretty similar to those of Japan's past.

Korea is never going to budge on the Dokdo issue and I really can't blame Koreans for being "stubborn and graceless" on this issue though there is a difference between "subborn and graceless" and just plain silly like many Koreans and the government appears to be at times with some of their antics over the Dokdo issue.* However, it is good to see that many students realize Japan made a mistake invading Korean though I wonder what exactly they think the mistake of invading Korea was?



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