[Odin]

They say time heals all wounds. Well anyone who has ever suffered a serious injury know that this statement is far from true. However, maybe with time we can become accustomed to the old aches and the pain becomes less intense. Also with any serious injury care and attention must be given or else the wound festers and infects otherwise healthy tissue. So to is the case with Korea and Japan. Time is slowly erasing the old animosities, but the pain and the memories are not quite gone.

Although this is being discussed at as though this is an issue of ancestry, there is still a small percentage of the population that did live though such days. They can never be completely gone as long there are those among us who were their during the bad times. Likewise their children harbor many of the same feelings as their parents. Those who are currently 35 to 50 years old grew up in a time when communications between these two countries was nothing like it is today. Before the age of personal electronic communication the Sea of Japan posed as a serious barrier for the vast majority of the population. All contact between them was either through government to government or though business trade. Hence it was not unusual, that the only thing a Korean might hear about the Japanese was what they were told by their parents. The same would be true of a Japanese child growing up in the same time period.

Thankfully this, animosity is begging to slip away at an increasing rate. For those of us who exist withing the modern framework of communication, it is easier to reach out and speak to the man we have been told is our enemy. We should never forget the past. However we should never hold the sins of past over the children of the present, or of the future!


P.S. Not to offend our Japanese friends, but Korean food does indeed ROCK!