After Japanese PM visited a cemetery where Japanese war criminals are buried, some 200 Japanese politicians and assemblymen made the same trip. To China and Korea, such visits are equivalent to German PM visiting Hitler's grave. Considering that there are ongoing land and natural resource development disputes without any relief in sight, expect things to heat up considerably and possibly result in some small scale military 'accidents'.

Most of the actions will be between China and Japan though because Korea is currently in midst of an internal feud between freedom of speech and national security.

It began with a Korean college professor posting some inflamatory articles online which praised North Korea and trashed America. Conservatives roared, saying he should be arrested and charged for endangering national security. Liberals want his freedom of speech rights respected. Interesting backgrounds: both the current Korean President and the current secretary of justice used to be human rights lawyers. Current leader of the opposition party is the daughter of General Park Jung Hee, the original military dictator of modern Korea who got assasinated by his own man.

Fun stuff. My opinion is that the professor is not altogether there but it makes no sense to jail a man for being crazy unless he hurts someone. Let him say what he wants and let his thoughts infect others. Time to crush them is when they band together and actually do something violent. Given that past Korean governments frequently used fabricated national security incidents to remain in power, more tolerance is called for, not less.