Seoul –

As a Korean baseball fan, Shin Jae-woong has plenty of reasons to watch this week’s Major League Baseball season opener between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres in Seoul.

This is the first time that Major League Baseball (MLB) holds a regular season in baseball-loving South Korea. The game featured several Korean stars, including Padres infielder Kim Ha-seong.

But for Shin and his two young sons, who are from the southeastern city of Gwangju, the main attraction is obvious. They came to see Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani.

“I think Ohtani is one of a kind. He’s like a different level player,” Shin said Wednesday while watching a Dodgers practice ahead of their series opener.

Ohtani, the all-around Japanese star who signed a record-breaking 10-year, $700 million contract with the Dodgers in December, now attracts crowds wherever he goes.

Perhaps surprisingly, Ohtani also has a legion of fans in South Korea, which has a fierce sporting rivalry and complicated history with Japan.

“He has a good personality. He is tall. He is handsome,” said Eo Soo-young, 38, a resident of Seoul. “There were other things, that’s an old story.”

South Korea and Japan came together in a positive mood this week around a U.S. game that served as a showcase for improving relations between the three nations.

“This has almost become a three-way event,” said Philip Goldberg, the U.S. ambassador to Seoul. He watched Wednesday’s game along with several senior South Korean and Japanese officials. “In this atmosphere of improved relations … it brings a lot more shine.”

Relations between Japan and South Korea have long been tense, often over issues related to atrocities committed by Japan during its brutal 1910-45 occupation of Korea. After South Korean President Yoon Seok-yeol took office in 2022, he instead chose to focus on the future, expand security cooperation, and held many meetings with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

Still, Japan remains a sensitive issue in South Korea, with many left-leaning politicians accusing Yoon of being too friendly to Japan.

Kishida is planning to attend Wednesday’s Major League Baseball opener in Seoul, perhaps with Yoon, according to Japanese media reports. Reports said Kishida’s visit was canceled because it might cause too much controversy ahead of South Korea’s general election next month.

“I think that although the two governments can solve the problem to a certain extent, this historical issue has not been resolved. This makes the relationship between the two countries likely to deteriorate in the future.” said Benjamin Engel, a professor at Seoul National University.

Currently, relations between the two countries are heating up, even at the civilian level. Recent opinion polls show that a majority of young South Koreans want to improve relations with Japan. South Korea’s interest in Japanese cultural products such as anime and commercial products such as beer is also surging.

Ambassador Goldberg said in an interview with Voice of America that he was optimistic that the trilateral relationship would also remain strong.

“This makes sense. This is in the interest of these three countries,” he said in an interview with Voice of America. “Sometimes we have to deal with and go through different periods. But I think there’s a logic to all of this to keep it going.”

Ohtani, known to South Koreans as a “baseball genius,” doesn’t hurt either, at least if you ask many Korean baseball fans.

What struck many was that Ohtani’s comments to the media before the game contained nothing but enthusiasm for the Korean team. This is in stark contrast to another Japanese baseball legend, Ichiro Suzuki, who ruffled the feathers of many Koreans by mocking and even insulting South Korea.

“(Otani) just respects Korea… that’s why others respect him too,” said Ryoo Sung-kyu, a Seoul resident. “I think it’s a give and take.”