Some People Will Believe Anything

The question you really have to ask yourself on reading tripe like this is whether a mature, self-assured democracy would plot to disturb international peace and commerce for a windswept and essentially uninhabited pile of guano. I’ll go out on a long limb here and say Japan and the United States wouldn’t, because unlike South Korea, they are mature and self-assured democracies.

You can’t keep a stable alliance with a nation where urban legend passes for public discourse, leading us to a second question: how vigorously will the South Korean government speak up to tamp down this blatant nonsense (which the Chosun Ilbo printed without so much as a skeptical reaction)? Their failure to do so would be strong evidence that a certain infamous Japanese analysis is dead-on. It will also tell American policymakers much about how South Korea strikes the balance between political exploitation and preserving a part of its alliance with the United States.