What do the Japanese think of North Korea?

Question:

Answer:

Same as most of the world, except there's more of an actual threat with the country being so close.

It's a country run by a corrupt government, which keeps the people poor and uninformed.

Poor people take desperate measures sometimes, so if the leader decides it's time to hate on Japan and attack Japan, then a lot of people will follow suit. North Korea's government knows that if they actually did do that though that they're going to lose in the end, so they just come up with some provocative act every few years to let off some steam.

I think most Japanese just want North Korea to open up.

Note though that English and Japanese name the countries differently, so there's a different perception involved in that. In English we say South Korea. Japanese is Kankoku. North Korea is Kita Chosen (North Chosen). There's no South Chosen, so the image is like Kankoku is a sovereign country of it's own, whereas North Korea is just a left-over from old times.

The Korean peninsula was also colonized by Japan, so there are still some tensions between not only Japan and North Korea, but South Korea as well.

In general, people just want to get along. There have been some attempts at that from both sides in recent years. North Korea released previously kidnapped Japanese nationals. Japan sometimes sends over aid in various forms.

I think most of the world just feels sorry for the common North Koreans that they're so poor.