COLUMN ONE : When Two Cultures Collide : As Seoul weighs lifting an import ban on Japanese films, videos and even comic books, bitterness lingers over 35 years of colonial rule. Many say S. Korea’s national identity has already been gutted.

Ask sixth-graders here about Japanese comic books, and their eyes light up. Slam Dunk, a macho basketball player, is hot, says one boy. So are Dragon Ball, a futuristic space warrior, and Dr. Slump, a mad scientist who designed the perfect robot girl.

Japanese comics deliver the ultimate in thrills, chills and “interesting stuff with girls, like nakedness,” he said. “We all like Japanese comics better, because Korean comics are too sissy.”

That is exactly what worries Kwag Young Jin, a Ministry of Culture bureaucrat, and other officials. Bootleg Japanese comics may be runaway hits, they say, but the violence and sex rampant in them are twisting young Korean minds. Likewise, they predict, if samurai movies were freely shown, violence would increase as people imitate the slashing warriors.

To hear Korean officials tell it, all that stands between their refined Land of Morning Calm and a hellish descent into Japanese cultural vulgarity is an import ban on Japanese movies, music, videos and other forms of pop culture.

The ban was adopted in 1945, after South Korea was freed from 35 years of Japan’s repressive colonial rule. It remains the most prominent symbol of the lingering sense of han , or bitter resentment, that many Koreans still feel toward the Japanese. (Korean officials acknowledge the ban also protects their media markets from well-financed Japanese competitors.)

But the long-entrenched prohibitions may soon be lifted. Earlier this year, President Kim Young Sam broke the taboo and pushed Korea closer to reconciliation with its erstwhile enemy by declaring in a goodwill gesture that the ban should be ended. Saying it conflicts with global trends toward open markets, Kim ordered the Ministry of Culture to review how and when this should be done. The review is expected to be finished this month.

At issue, however, is far more than whether Koreans will get to see samurai slasher flicks or Dragon Ball videos. The ban reflects what Kwag called the Korean people’s “complex feelings of jealousy, contempt and hatred all mixed together” toward Japan.

It has become a lightning rod for centuries of accumulated grievances: Claims that Japan robbed Korea of cultural treasures in raids of priceless art and decimated its national identity by forcing Koreans to adopt Japanese customs, language and names during the colonial period.

To make matters worse, they say, Japan still refuses to acknowledge adequately its cultural debt to Korea. Scholars say that Koreans introduced everything from the tea ceremony and flower arranging to temple architecture and kabuki during waves of migration to Japan beginning in the 4th Century. Some even claim that Japan’s indigenous religion, Shintoism, stemmed from Korea’s shamanism and that the Imperial family originated from Korean aristocrats in Japan. (Most Japanese authorities reject that view.)

Against this backdrop of bitterness, talk of Slam Dunk and Dr. Slump provokes withering looks. “The teacher was hurt by his student in a barbaric way,” said Kwag. “Our pride was hurt. This feeling will not go away soon.”

Admitting it is flagrantly ignored, he added: “We don’t think this import ban means much. But we need something to remind the Japanese that they need to frankly admit their acts and do something to comfort Koreans.”

Such attitudes perplex many Japanese. Although they understand the emotion and feel a sense of guilt, many wonder what they can do about it today and why Koreans cling to hatreds half a century after the colonial period.

For their part, a growing number of Japanese scholars are starting to acknowledge Korean influence on Japan’s culture. However, many view Korea largely as a bridge through which Chinese culture passed to Japan. The tea ceremony, for instance, originated in China and was introduced by Korea to Japan.

Some Japanese scholars still challenge claims that culture flowed to Japan. Korean archeologists recently unearthed ancient clay figures used in burial rites identical to those found in Japan, a find they say adds to evidence that Japanese tombs are heavily influenced by Korean traditions. Yet Inokuma Kanekatsu, head of the National Institute for Nara Cultural Heritage, said the discovery showed that “culture cultivated by the Japanese flowed back into the Korean peninsula.”

And Japanese authorities are impeding research into the roots of the imperial family by preventing the royal tombs from being opened to scholars. Since many tombs predate Japan’s written history, which began in the 7th Century, they could provide priceless clues about Japan’s murky origins and the assertion that early emperors were from Korea.

Japan, after defeating Russia and China in wars over control of Korea at the turn of the century, colonized the nation from 1910 until its 1945 defeat in World War II. Officially, Japan and South Korea resolved most issues when they re-established diplomatic ties in 1965.

Japan compensated Korea for colonization and gave economic development aid, guaranteed certain rights for Korean residents in Japan and returned 1,326 cultural properties such as pottery, temple paintings and statues.

Since then, they have signed other agreements, ranging from technology transfers to greater rights for the estimated 700,000 Koreans in Japan, many of whom were conscripted as laborers in the 1930s and ‘40s. But each time an issue is settled, Japanese officials say, new ones surface, such as Japan’s use of Korean women as sex slaves during World War II.

Or old issues fail to fade away: Despite the 1965 treaty legally settling the matter, some Koreans are pushing for further surveys to determine just how many priceless ceramics and temple artworks were expropriated to Japan. Beginning with 13th-Century pirate raids, stretching to warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s 1592 invasion and later to colonial rule, tens of thousands of treasures were said to be taken, turning up in such places as Tenri University near Kyoto and the Museum of Oriental Art in Osaka, said Shin Yong Ha, a social sciences professor at Seoul National University.

The recent record-shattering sale of a 15th-Century Korean porcelain dish for $3 million at Christie’s in New York deepened resentment. Only two similar dishes are known to exist--and both are in museums in Japan.

Despite the passage of time, the Korean sense of han still comes up at surprising times. Etsuo Miyoshi, a Shikoku island glove maker, decided to close his factory in Korea in 1989 because rising labor rates made it unprofitable. Korean labor activists protested at his Shikoku headquarters, coming by the busloads from nearby Osaka.

“They said: ‘You occupied us for 35 years! This is a historical problem!’ I couldn’t say anything,” Miyoshi recalled.

Japanese officials were likewise startled when then-Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa visited South Korea in 1992. He was told by then-President Roh Tae Woo that Japan was obliged to provide economic assistance because it was better off than Korea, which was having hard times. The meeting eventually resulted in the establishment of a joint foundation for scientific and technical cooperation, and a package to promote Korean exports in Japan. Still, Roh’s logic was lost on many Japanese.

“Probably a lot of Japanese couldn’t understand this. Economic relations and private business are not like an older brother helping a younger brother,” said a Japanese Foreign Ministry official. “If it’s profitable, they’ll do it. If it’s not, they won’t.”

Katsuhiro Kuroda, dean of Japanese correspondents in Seoul as the Sankei Shimbun’s bureau chief, said the resentment toward Japan may be a form of “self-confirmation” for Koreans.

“Perhaps because Korea was constantly invaded from long ago, they can unite themselves” by harboring collective grudges against an external enemy, Kuroda said. “It is not necessary for we Japanese to get excited about it.”

Some Koreans agree. Lee Jan Soo, a popular producer with the Seoul Broadcasting Station, is airing a 16-part series, “The Ghost Is Going,” that examines what he argues is a basic lack of identity among Koreans. He asserts that a true national identity has not been allowed to bloom under the overwhelming influence of Chinese culture, which Korea absorbed as a vassal state until the late 19th Century, the Japanese colonization, and today’s hybrid of Japanese and Western pop culture.

The series aims its barbs not only at the Japanese, but also at Koreans who slavishly imitate their ads, TV shows and fashions.

“It is not important to assert that Japanese culture is actually Korean culture,” Lee said. “What we need to do is rediscover Korean identity.”

He says Korean identity is so diluted that the first page of middle-school textbooks reads: “Contribute to the common prosperity of humankind.” In Germany, the textbooks say: “Be a good German,” he said.

Asked what, exactly, represents Korean culture, Lee falters. Maybe arirang , the traditional folk song, he muses. Or hanbok , the brightly colored traditional woman’s dress. Yet Lee and others lament that such culture is not widely known outside Korea.

“We need to be assertive,” he said. That is precisely Kim’s aim as he nudges his nation to lift the ban and put old grudges behind. Thanks to a generational shift, increasing economic ties and new political overtures between Kim and Japan’s coalition government, a growing number of Koreans seem ready to mend fences.

In a February poll by the Federation of Korean Arts and Culture, 4% said the culture ban should be retained, 48% said it should be lifted eventually and 15% said it should be abolished immediately. Ten years ago, officials say, the very mention of lifting the ban was taboo.

Koreans also are showing new attitudes on another hot issue: Whether to demolish the Japanese colonial headquarters in Seoul, as Kim has proposed, or preserve its historical and architectural legacy.

Just three years ago, when a Korean architect protested the demolition on TV, he was bombarded with hate mail and phone calls. But in February, four of Korea’s leading architects said the building should be preserved, both to memorialize the colonial experience and to protect the ornate, Renaissance-style architecture--the best remaining example of it in Asia. Many Koreans seemed to agree: About 56% of those asked in 1992 by Korea Survey Gallup said it should not be destroyed.

When Masatoshi Muto, political counselor of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, was in Korea 20 years ago, he said people could not tell their relatives they were studying Japanese and camouflaged their textbooks. Today, Japanese is the second fastest-growing foreign language in colleges, after Chinese; Japan’s economic might is seen as the key reason.

At a major bookstore in downtown Seoul, clerk Hwang Pan Keun said demand for Japanese-language books is growing about 15% each year, especially on economics and Korea-Japan relations.

One recent customer was Lee Kyong Hwa, a graduate student in Japanese at Hanguk University. She said she took up Japanese because it was closer in structure to Korean than other Asian languages and would probably be easier to master. “It’s absolutely accepted these days,” she said, as she browsed through Japanese dictionaries. “I teach Japanese part-time, and the students are sincere and very enthusiastic.”

The study of Korean is also growing in popularity in Japan. As the ethnic boom proceeds apace, sparking more interest in Asian culture, promoters recently held the first Korean film festival, and Korean singers are mainstays on televised Japanese music shows.

Travel between the nations has boomed since the Roh administration liberalized foreign travel about five years ago. The number of Koreans going to Japan has increased from 158,000 in 1987 to 800,000 in 1993; Japanese going to Korea from 708,000 in 1987 to 1.3 million in 1993, the Japanese government says.

The Korean government has also initiated more cultural exchanges through the Korea Foundation, offering fellowships and funding for Korean studies programs at Japanese universities. Last year, the Korea-Japan Forum brought together opinion leaders in both countries for the first time, modeled after the Shimoda Conference for U.S.-Japan experts.

Meanwhile, an estimated 1 million households pull down Japanese TV broadcasts via the NHK Network satellite--largely without paying the requisite fees and sometimes illegally copying the programs for sale to local video stores. About 10,000 young Korean women buy the Japanese fashion magazine Nonno, which is legally distributed in South Korea, according to SNU professor Shin.

Just as Japan absorbed Chinese culture through Korea centuries ago, Koreans are absorbing Western culture through Japan today--imitating everything from Japanized grunge fashions and torn jeans to henna-dyed hair.

And then there are the ubiquitous comic books. About 200 kinds command 70% of the market, most of them pirated. But even as sixth-graders snap them up, they do not forget their lessons in political correctness.

“Japan is a bad country,” said Song Ju Hwan, a sixth-grader at Kwan Ak Primary School in Seoul. “They attacked Korea and beat Koreans in older days. I’m going to strike them back!” she added, with a rambunctious punch in the air.

Indeed, Korea-Japan ties continue to have their bad moments. One of the hottest best-sellers is “Japan Is Nothing,” by Chon Yo Ok, a former Tokyo correspondent for the Korean Broadcasting System. The book castigates everything from Japan’s cramped homes to its sexism and racism to its “infantile” culture. Judging from casual interviews, a fair number of Koreans have read it and shifted their image of Japan from bad to worse.

“Underneath the economic might, there is a people whose history is dirty, whose culture infantile and who are discontented and twisted,” Chon writes. “Koreans and Japanese may look alike, but they are a world apart.”

But, in general, Muto and others say the long and uneasy relationship between the two peoples is on the mend.

Lee Young Hee and Kim Duk Soo are two reasons why. Lee writes a widely read newspaper column and has written several books, all devoted to interpreting the Japanese collection of classic poems known as the Manyoshu using ancient Korean. Through her work, she has solved the riddle of previously unclear passages and uncovered the common roots of both peoples.

Her following is strong in Japan as well, where she enjoys a 2,000-member supporters group. She has received more than 5,000 letters expressing both surprise and appreciation for revealing the ancient Korean link to Japan.

Kim is a noted master of the traditional Korean drum. Founder of the Samulnori drum group, he was an early influence on Japan’s world-famous taiko group, Kodo, and travels to Japan each year to share and teach his music at a training camp in the mountains of Nagano prefecture.

More than government decrees or official forums, it is through the deep rhythms of a common musical heritage that Koreans and Japanese can heal the lingering han and, at long last, make peace, he says.

“When we are singing our songs, no one knows whether the origin is Korean or Japanese,” Kim said. “What is certain is that the rhythms and feelings between us are exactly the same.”

Researcher Chi Jung Nam of the Times Seoul Bureau contributed to this report.