US Naval Ships

If Japan and South Korea were on Facebook, there is no doubt that their relationship status would be “it’s complicated.” Between territorial spats, historical disputes and arguing over a pop star’s table manners, these two countries have a lot of uncomfortable diplomatic moments. But they do have one very major thing in common—mutual defense treaties with the United States. Although we doubt (and very much hope) that Tokyo and Seoul never resort to war to solve these issues, some South Korean netizens recently took to the Internet to ponder who Uncle Sam would back in such a fight.

Behind the backdrop of recent trilateral military exercises between Japan, South Korea and the U.S. with a U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, South Korean netizens on the website eTorrent debated this topic in a thread titled “If South Korea and Japan got into a war or armed conflict, who would the U.S. support?”

Many netizens thought that Japan-U.S. ties were very strong and America would back Japan in any such conflict. It seems like these netizens are not very confident in their own relationship with Uncle Sam.

America would think about their own interests and then probably back Japan.

The U.S. won’t support just one side, but if they do, it would be Japan.

The answer is pretty clear, we don’t even have to talk about this…

Meanwhile, other netizens looked at how the U.S. stayed neutral in the Falklands War, which was fought between two of its allies—the U.K. and Argentina. They thought that this example proved the U.S. would choose to stay out of any hypothetical conflict.

Another opinion was that the country that declared war, or the aggressor, would most likely not have Uncle Sam’s back. Others said that America would stay out of the conflict, but sell weapons to both sides.

One user brought up a particularly unfortunate scenario where a major military power like Russia or China backs one side in this hypothetical war and then the U.S. is forced to intervene, bringing about World War III.

We here at RocketNews24, being the peace-loving types, sincerely hope none of these hypothetical war situations come to pass between our Japanese and South Korean friends. Instead, please just hug it out and give peace a chance.

Hugging cats

Source: Searchina
Images: 1, 2