Apology mismatch: An experimental approach to Japan's apologies to Korea

Abstract

Since 1965, Japan has issued numerous apologies to Korea, which however failed to resonate with the Korean public. To investigate this puzzle, this paper analyses the structure of these apologies and empirically examines their reception in Korea. Blatz et al.'s (Political Psychology, 2009, 30, 219) classification of components of political apologies was applied to conduct a qualitative analysis of 63 official apology statements by Japan to Korea and identify the most frequently used components (Study 1). Korean participants (N = 210) were randomly presented with an experimental vignette consisting of a major apology component to examine their psychological responses, and they also ranked the importance of each major apology component (Study 2). Results showed that while Koreans viewed admission of wrongdoing as an essential and the most demanded component of apology, it was paradoxically the least frequent component offered by Japan in reality.

Political apologies and their acceptance: Experimental evidence from victims and perpetrators nations

“…Nevertheless, this is an auxiliary step that serves to design the experimental layout; the variation could be saturated with a considerably smaller number of statements. Internally, the percentages of factors, which were identified based on the coding scheme developed for this paper, correlate (r = .81) with the percentages of factors based on the initial coding scheme that derived from an overlapping pool of apology statements (Yeung & David, 2022).…”

“…The enquiry into the analytics of apologies has expanded with the realization that apologies may be the subject of an extensive public scrutiny, which may expose deficiencies in their content. In search of an effective apology, scholars have examined the content of apologies and distinguished several components (Blatz et al, 2009; Lewicki et al, 2016; Schumann, 2014; Schumann & Dragotta, 2020; Yeung & David, 2022). As a result, a degree of consensus in identifying major components of apology has emerged.…”

“…We used a composite scale from four questions with answers on a seven‐point Likert scale: ‘Being Japanese/Korean feels natural to me; I identify with other Japanese/Koreans; I see myself as Japanese/Korean; I feel strong ties with other Japanese/Koreans’. (Cameron, 2004; Doosje et al, 1998; Yeung & David, 2022).…”