Survey on Students' Concerns between South Korea and Japan 

        Are Korean students quite different from Japanese students?

Authors:  Keiko, Yui, Kaori, Eri,  Kiyo, Hiyoshi

Division:  Nagano-ken Nagano Nishi High School

Instructor: Miyao, Hisae 
hisae@nagano-c.ed.jp

Introduction

   
   With the recent boom of Asian culture in Japan,  we can often see various Asian things in our town.  Asian music, movies, magazines, food and restaurants, etc. are becoming more and more popular here and the number of the young fans, who have witnessed such dramatic changes with their own eyes and have developed an interest in Asia, is increasing.  Actually lots of young people in Asia have come to be open-minded and generous in taking in other cultures beyond borders, although they find that understanding historical backgrounds of various countries is often hard to accept.  For example, this phenomenon has been happening between South Korea and Japan.  In spite of the unforgettable sad past memories, exchanges between South Korea and Japan are surely increasing more and more and young people have a favorable feeling toward each other's culture such as music and movies.  We believe the relationship between South Korea and Japan is becoming much closer.  

   On the other hand, under these circumstances we come across the question that our image of Korean people and their culture might not always be true because it is often fueled by mass media and we get the most information through media.   Then we focused on the relationship between South Korea and Japan and decided to start the exchange project with the students at Namju High School in South Korea using the Internet in order to deepen our understanding of Korean culture, the people's ways of thinking, their values and so on.  Especially, we have much interest in the process of getting rid of our stereotypes and what kinds of the differences and the similarities exist between Korean students and Japanese students.  Then we made a survey on high school students' concerns as a part of our research of the 100 students at each school.

The main points of this survey are as follows.  

1) What do the students in South Korea think about their school lives?
2) What kind of opinion do they have concerning current world issues?
3) Are most of them expecting the prospects for future?