Cross Cultural Experiences by Students of Korean Middle Schools in Japan

This study attempted to inquire into the nature of cross-cultural experiences of Korean students and how it affected their views about Japanese and other cultures. The respondents were Korean students, born in Japan, attending Korean Middle Schools in Japan. It was found that a great many of the students had close friendships and relatively high interest in communicating with Japanese. Though they appeared to have neutral views about Japanese personal characteristics, they showed relatively negative views concerning Japanese attitudes toward foreign countries and/or their citizens. Moreover, favorable experiences in interacting with Japanese were mostly related to the students' overt ethnic characteristics, such as their language and traditional clothes. These experiences were found to be of relatively high importance in predicting students' interest both in communication with Japanese and Japanese culture. Finally, it was found that the factor of having close Japanese friends was related to the students' interests in cross cultural communication. These results have implications as to the importance of the appreciation of Korean ethno cultural factors by Japanese, and the establishment of intimate cross cultural relationships.