7 out of 10 S.Koreans joining campaign to boycott Japanese products: Poll

SEOUL - Seven out of 10 South Koreans said they were joining the campaign to boycott Japanese products amid the lingering controversy over the Seoul-Tokyo trading spat, a poll showed Thursday.

According to the Realmeter survey, 72.2 percent of respondents said they were participating in the no-buy campaign against Japanese products and tour to Japan.

Those not joining the boycott campaign was 21.5 percent, and 6.3 percent refrained from expressing views.

The participation rate continued to rise since Japan tightened control in July over its export to South Korea of three materials, vital to producing memory chips and display panels that are the mainstay of the South Korean export.

South Korea claimed that Japan's export curbs came in protest of the South Korean top court's rulings that ordered some of Japanese firms to pay reparation to the South Korean victims who were forced into hard labor without pay during the 1910-45 Japanese colonization of the Korean Peninsula.

In August, Japan dropped South Korea off its whitelist of trusted export partners that are given preferential export procedure. In response, Seoul removed Tokyo from its whitelist of trusted export partners.

South Korea decided in August to terminate its military intelligence-sharing pact with Japan, called General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA).

However, South Korea unexpectedly decided last week to delay the GSOMIA termination as long as trade talks with Japan go on normally.

Controversy emerged as Japan said South Korea made concessions by delaying the termination, while South Korea said Japan asked for the postponement in return for talks to retract its export curbs.

Amid the controversy, the participation to join the no-buy campaign against Japanese products grew. The latest participation rate, surveyed by the pollster on Sept 18, was 65.7 percent compared to this week's 72.2 percent.

The result was based on a poll of 501 voters conducted on Wednesday. It had plus and minus 4.4 percentage points in margin of error with a 95-percent confidence level.