ROKN and JMSDF cadets mingle well together in the same boat and we assiduously keep our manners. When three Hatsuyuki-class destroyers carrying 110 JMSDF cadets and 490 personnel visited Pyongtek naval base and came aboard Korean destroyers two weeks ago (Korean sailors went aboard the Hatsuyuki-class destroyers too until we could see close up their SAMs and cleaning equipments) for juxtapose appraisement of their level of technology and damage control, we made sure they returned home without any feeling of hostility or lackluster hospitality.
Some level of animosity and feelings of discomfort is inevitable between them with history notwithstanding when they are still being trained to fight against each other as much as they are trained to fight together some day given outstanding strategic circumstances. And beyond the military periphery Korean and Japanese academics and athletes of the new generations learn to respect and respectfully assimilate their exclusive scientific, economic and athletic achievements and feats of historical significance much better than academics and athletes of any other isolated couple or group of Asian countries.
Chinese invasions of Korea probably recorded the highest casualties of Koreans every time a Chinese or Mongolian dynasty wanted to expand their influence eastward toward Korea and Japan when a westward strategy was not provided with enough opportunity to develop and progress. Korea forever remained a buffer state to Japan against a Chinese incursion due to mere conditions of geography and for being a smaller state, fated to shelter Japan from any foreign invasion for 5,000 years until the WWII, and as much as Koreans would like to curse the Japanese for the unfortunate circumstances that they were placed in and how Japan benefited too much from Korea's inadvertent protection of it, they know the root cause of most of their misfortune in war history remain the Chinese people's rabid martial instinct for military conflict and their insatiable expansionist ambitions. Given permission to kill in a live arms military exercise between the militaries of China, Japan and Korea, most Korean soldiers will choose to protect the Japanese against the Chinese as they always did throughout their mutual history.
