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POWs Waiting for Apologies (in National News) API Advisory Commission Visits S.F. (in Bay Area News) Asian Food Markets in the Bay Area (in Business) Lampo Leong's Forces • Contemplation (in A&E) Reasons to Celebrate (in Opinion) South Korea Further Opens Door to Japanese Pop Culture By Kyong-Hwa Seok/AP South Korea on last week opened its market further to Japanese pop culture, allowing the import of more Japanese movies, video games and television shows. It was the third phase of South Korea’s lifting of a half-century-old ban on Japanese pop culture. The liberalization began in late 1998 and expanded late last year. That decision was based on Seoul’s evaluation that a cultural interaction has helped ease deep-rooted animosity between the two nations. The Korean Peninsula was a colony of Japan from 1910 to 1945. “We’ve concluded that the first and second lifting of restrictions did not have a negative effect on our pop culture like some people worried,” Culture and Tourism Minister Park Jie-won said. “In fact, they helped the market penetration of South Korean pop cultural products in Japan by improving sentiment among Japanese on South Korea,” he said. Park said sales of Korean movies to Japan increased from $280,000 in 1998 to $1.68 million last year. Of them, Swiri, a spy thriller, drew 1.2 million viewers in Japan, he said. Tokyo does not impose any restriction on South Korean pop culture. In the first-phase of liberalization in 1998, South Korea allowed major international award-winning Japanese movies to be screened in South Korea for the first time. So far, 15 films, including Love Letter, Ring and Shall We Dance have been shown in South Korea. Of them, Love Letter attracted 1.2 million viewers, a hit in South Korea. In late 1999, Seoul allowed Japanese pop music to be performed in theaters or halls with fewer than 2,000 seats. On June 27, all restrictions on Japanese pop music performances were lifted. The latest move also lifted the ban on all Japanese movies except for those that cannot be shown to minors—aged 18 or younger—by South Korean standards. Also free to be sold or shown from now on are all Japanese music cassette tapes and CDs in any language but Japanese, meaning that if Japanese singers record songs in Korean, English or any other language but their own they can sell them in South Korea. Also lifted from the ban are most video games and TV news, documentary and sports shows. Still to be banned are certain movies for adults, animated films that did not win any awards in international film competitions, TV comedy shows and dramas. Park declined to say when the remaining ban will be lifted. During Japanese colonial rule, Korean culture was virtually stamped out. Koreans were prohibited from using their Korean names and language in school. Japan and South Korea normalized relations in 1965 and have become close economic partners since despite sporadic tensions, such as over islands claimed by both sides. Diplomatically, they grew even closer after communist North Korea sent shock waves through the region by test-firing a missile that flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific in the summer of 1998. The two neighbors held their first joint navy rescue exercises last year. After visiting Japan in 1998, President Kim Dae-jung urged Koreans to embrace the country and leave history behind. He promised to speed the opening of South Korea to Japanese culture. Various surveys showed that the deep-rooted mutual animosity between Japanese and South Koreans have eased considerably since Kim’s visit. Nearly half of the 4.6 million foreign visitors to South Korea in 1999 were Japanese. The two nations are even discussing setting up the first visit to South Korea by Japan’s Emperor Akihito in time for the 2002 World Cup to be co-hosted by Japan and South Korea. Akihito’s grandfather and father were emperors during colonial rule and the visit is still a sensitive issue.