korea-japan relations..showbiZz!hehehe!:-)

SEOUL, South Korea -- In Korea, Bae Yong-joon was chiefly considered a moderately successful TV actor, with a soft smile and gentle demeanor perfect for the nation's soft and gentle melodramas.In Japan, however, he is "Yon-sama" (a high honorific form of his name), mobbed by thousands (mostly middle-aged women) when he visits. On one of his most recent trips to Tokyo, 10 overenthusiastic fans were injured in the chaos.Meanwhile in Korea, the biggest film of the Christmas season was Hayao Miyazaki's "Howl's Moving Castle," which has taken in $18 million and is poised to beat out "Shrek 2" as the most successful animated film ever in Korea.For the past 100 years, Korea and Japan have enjoyed the bitterest of relationships. A harsh colonization of Korea from 1910 to 1945, in which the Japanese tried to suppress and even eliminate Korean culture, led to years of anger and acrimony. Following independence in 1945, Japanese culture was largely banned in South Korea, while prejudice against Koreans was the norm in Japan.But over the past year, Korea and Japan have grown enamored with each other's culture in a way that would have seen scarcely possible just a short time ago.The catalysts have been different In each country. In Korea, last year kicked off with an end to nearly all restrictions on Japanese pop culture that had been in place for nearly 60 years.In Japan, however, the biggest change was the KBS-TV melodrama "Winter Sonata." The 2002 series had swept across Asia, creating fans of Bae Yong-joon and his co-star Choi Ji-soo from Bangkok to Hong Kong. But when the series broke on NHK in Japan (on the satellite channel, then the terrestrial), fan fanaticism rose to a whole new level. Japanese tourism to Korea spiked 40% and the "Winter Sonata" soundtrack sold more than 1 million copies."The basic reason people love 'Winter Sonata' is that it is really similar to the dramas they used to make in the 1960s but they don't make anymore," says Catherine Park, vp international business at Korea's CJ Entertainment. "Most trendy dramas in Japan now target people in their 20s, so TV viewers in their 40s and 50s have nothing to watch. And those people are the ones with money to spend." Indeed, Japan's Daiichi Life Research Institute estimates that the economic impact of the drama on the two countries was substantial (including increased tourism dollars).At first, many in Japan sniffed that Korea was a one-hit wonder. Quickly, other Korean stars found popularity in Japan -- Choi Ji-soo, Lee Byeong-hun and Jang Dong-gun are all big names there now. And one of Japan's top pop singers for the past three years has been the Korean teen sensation BoA.Korean success in Japan has grown so broad that even the biggest skeptics have had to admit it is deeper than just a fad. In December, "Windstruck" became the highest-grossing Korean film ever in Japan, pulling in $20 million at the boxoffice. One prominent Japanese magazine, Kinema Junbo, named four Korean films to its top-10 list last year -- more spots than Hollywood fare received.Additionally, Korean movies are commanding ever-higher presales numbers for Japan -- $2.5 million for "Rikidozan," $2.7 million for "A Moment to Remember," $3.2 million for "A Bittersweet Life" and a huge $8 million for Bae Yong-joon's new film "April Snow" (even though the script is still unfinished)."Five years ago, there were no Korean films in Japan," says Fuyuhiko Nishi, vp acquisitions and marketing at GAGA Communications (the film's importer). "When I told my friends I was in the Korean acquisitions section, they'd say 'Poor Nishi.' But now, everybody knows the Korean names."In Korea, the growing presence of Japanese film and culture has not been anywhere near as dramatic, but it has been broad and significant nonetheless. In part, that is because Japanese pop culture has been a hot item in the black market for years, with anime and J-Pop selling widely across Seoul, and Japanese culture cafes offering music and smuggled videos.But the lifting of the culture restrictions has changed Korea. Japanese TV shows and film, such as the classic "Zatoichi" or the more recent "Ring," fill the dial, and pop acts like Namie Amuro play to thousands in arenas in Seoul and elsewhere. The October release "Shouting Out Love at the Heart of the World," imported by Showbox, did a modest but respectable $2.5 million in Korea. (The biggest live-action Japanese film in Korea remains "Love Letter." Released in Korea in 1999, it pulled in $3 million.)"It's all about exposure," CJ's Park says. "Japanese films have only been legal here a year. You're going to see more and more of them."In some ways, the biggest presence of Japanese culture has come from Korean productions. The most expensive Korean film of the Christmas season was "Rikidozan,"-- produced by Korea's Sidus Pictures -- a Japanese-language biopic tells the story of the father of professional wrestling in Japan (a man who was actually from Korea). "Rikidozan" performed poorly at the boxoffice, but Sidus CEO and producer Tcha Sungjai says that his interest was as much building co-production ties with Japan and getting into the Japanese market as it was doing well at the Korean boxoffice.In perhaps the biggest move to capitalize on the popularity of Korean culture in Japan and elsewhere, the governor of Gyeonggi province just announced plans to build a $1.9 billion "Hallyu-wood" ("Hallyu" being the Korean term for the success of its pop culture abroad) just Northwest of Seoul. The 74-acre Hallyuwood is due to open in 2008 and will feature streets, restaurants and shops named after famous actors, a large studio complex, a film school, performance halls and more.