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Comment by dr_dshiv | Hacker News Reader

My first day in Japan I fell asleep on the train. I woke up to a train employee telling me to leave the train. I grabbed my bag and left in a daze, only to realize too late that I left my duffle bag on the top shelf. I reported it and was assured that it would be found. 2 weeks later they still hadn't found my bag but kindly told me that it must have been a Korean.

Um. Well, that was 20 years ago. I'm sure things are different now.

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I loled at that `must have been a Korean` comment.

History of Koreans in Japan has a complicated story. But basically ethnic Koreans are treated as a second class citizen in Japan.

A Korean-American friend told me this story. He worked with a Britain/Ireland born coworker who was working in US at the time. Blond, European. He traveled fair bit to Japan. He knew this guy was Korean-American and in a conversation he asked the Korean-American why Japanese didn't like Koreans.

The EU guy said when he visited Japan in 2000, Japanese told him they didn't like Koreans.

And than in 2005 or so, he heard from Japanese that they liked Koreans.

In what context the Japanese told a blond European guy why they liked or didn't like Koreans is unknown.

This EU born coworker was confused what changed in that 5 year period.

> This EU born coworker was confused what changed in that 5 year period.

Could be this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bae_Yong-joon

Or more seriously, a series of Korean dramas that somehow gained immense popularity in Japan. Bae, nicknamed Yon-sama, became so popular that Japanese prime minister (Junichiro Koizumi) joked that he wanted to be like Yon-sama.

Yup, I looked up and sure enough 'Winter Sonata' TV series was shown in Japan in 2003.

Irony is that of the 10 richest peeps in Japan, 2 are Korean descent. One owns big chain of pachinko. https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-pachinko-gambling-ja...

The other is Masayoshi Son

Both were denied the path to a stable salary career life time job at a big firm and so they went on their own way.

This might give you some perspective. I befriended and later dated a Korean whose parents were both Korean but even though she was born in Japan, since her parents never became citizens, she was still considered an alien. So, even though she was raised in Japan and spoke fluent Japanese (as well as English) and was for all intents and purposes as Japanese as anyone in Japan, she had to go back to Japan every couple years to renew her... resident visa.

It might be a while until such attitudes go away. From what I can tell the feeling isn't very mutual on the Korean side, either.

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