(・・・) South Korean president Roh Moo Hyun minced no words in his tirade against Japan last week. Angered by Japanese moves to survey a contested range of islets currently occupied by Korea, he blasted Tokyo for essentially reaffirming "Japan's criminal history of waging wars ... as well as 40 years of exploitation, torture, imprisonment, forced labor and even sexual slavery." The comments drove relations between the neighbors to a new low―and, more to the point, scored Roh points with his young and intensely nationalistic core supporters. Roh needs all the help he can get, with his Uri party expected to perform poorly in this month's local elections, mostly because of the lackluster economy. But the president may be picking the wrong fight. While Japan-bashing is a generally accepted practice across South Korea, a growing number of citizens worry that such populist outbursts are damaging the country's reputation, making it seem backward and isolated from the world. They are rallying not to the opposition Grand National Party (GNP), which remains tainted by a corruption-stained past, but to a budding movement of neoconservative thinkers. This loosely affiliated group―comprised of younger, pro-Washington, pro-market, pro-globalization conservatives―argues that Roh has wildly misjudged Korean interests on a variety of fronts, including the islands, called Dokdo by Seoul and Takeshima by Tokyo. "Because of Dokdo, our international relations [will] deteriorate," says Ahn Byung Jik, who leads a newly formed think tank called the New Right Foundation. "This government is making a huge mistake." (・・・)