Nearly 60 percent of Japanese and around 70 percent of South Koreans told a recent survey they are concerned about deteriorating public sentiment against each other and that efforts should be made to improve them.

The poll by the Japanese citizens' group Genron NPO and the South Korean think tank East Asia Institute found that 54.4 percent of Japanese said their impressions of South Korea are either "not good" or "rather bad," up 17 percentage points from a year earlier.

Slightly less than 71 percent of the South Korean respondents expressed negative sentiment, according to the survey conducted from late May through June on around 1,000 people each in Japan and South Korea.