Interesting piece of news I ran into the other day: anything Korean is suddenly the hottest trend in Japan these days. As a recent article at Salon.com explains it,

Koreans have a harsh history in Japan. Their homeland was under Tokyo’s colonist yoke for 35 years, and in Japan they still face discrimination and cruel stereotypes. But thanks to the mega-hit South Korean soap opera “Winter Sonata,” Koreans these days also face something quite different in Japan: adulation.

On visits to Tokyo, the show’s two main actors -- Bae Yong-joon, 32, and Choi Ji-woo, 29 -- are mobbed by swooning fans, and sales of chewing gum and chocolates they advertise have surged.

Japanese are filling Korean language classes, crooning Korean pop songs at karaoke clubs and buying out flights to Seoul to visit places featured in the drama. Ayumi Udagawa, 30, has gone a step further. Like thousands of women in recent months, she has registered with a matchmaking agency for the ultimate hot-selling item: a Korean husband. . .

The phenomenon is quite a twist -- if a superficial one -- for the image of Koreans in Japan, which colonized the Korean Peninsula from 1910 until 1945. Koreans in Japan have struggled for decades against stereotypes depicting them as irrational, untrustworthy and violent.

Despite deep cultural similarities, the two countries -- and their people -- remain far apart. “This is perhaps the first time Korea is admired so widely by ordinary Japanese,” said Chung Dae-kyun, Tokyo Metropolitan University professor of Korean studies. “It’s a very positive development for both countries.”

Is this just the latest fad to hit Japanese culture, or is it a fundamental shift in how in Koreans are treated in Japan? I may be a little pessimistic, but I’ll wait until Japan apologizes for the atrocities that they committed against Koreans during WWII (i.e., “comfort women") before I’m truly convinced that it’s the latter.