Kasugai Moe (春日井 萌), founder and representative of South Korea-based KOREC, said that promoting people-to-people exchanges is essential to improving Japan–South Korea relations and discussed the initiative connecting South Koreans seeking employment in Japan with Japanese companies, as well as its future prospects.
Kasugai Moe (春日井 萌), 35, founder and representative of KOREC, a South Korean employment-matching platform, spoke with Yonhap News at the company’s Seoul office. She introduced services that post job listings from Japanese companies for South Koreans and provide advice on finding employment in Japan. More than 1000 people have found jobs or received job offers from Japanese companies through KOREC to date.
Kasugai (春日井 萌) took a leave of absence from high school to study in the United States and later studied political science and diplomacy at Yonsei University. Her interest in Japan–South Korea relations began when a Korean friend she met while studying abroad declared that they were ending their friendship after Ichiro’s game-winning hit defeated South Korea in the Japan–South Korea game in the 2009 WBC final.
Kasugai (春日井 萌), who wants to improve Japan–South Korea relations through people-to-people exchanges, established KOREC in 2019 and based it at a café-style office in Seoul’s Sinchon district. She said Japanese companies tend to regard South Koreans as highly capable and believe that language barriers can be overcome by learning the language later.
Emphasising the importance of people-to-people exchanges, Kasugai (春日井 萌) said, “I hope Japan–South Korea relations will begin with cultural and people-to-people exchanges and develop to the point where both sides can understand each other’s deep history.” Drawing on her experience studying abroad, she also operates an education consultancy supporting Japanese people who wish to attend universities in South Korea. She plans to continue working at the grassroots level as a “people’s diplomat” in the future.