To the average South Korean, North Korea is surprisingly a non-issue. Most people just don't all that fired up over it and view the efforts around it (mandatory

To the average South Korean, North Korea is surprisingly a non-issue. Most people just don't all that fired up over it and view the efforts around it (mandatory military conscription, etc.) as a huge inconvenience and not much else. China is mostly seen as a source of cheap stuff and transient air pollution (even when the pollution is clearly caused by domestic activities). When China comes up elsewhere its for reasons of economic competition or having to do with those weird ethnic Koreans that live along the border between China and North Korea. What South Korea has as its most pressing problems are mostly economic, stagnant wage growth in an advanced economy, pending shrinking population, very limited agriculturally suitable land, an export dependent economy with economically depressed customers and so on. A few years ago the price of cabbage shot up a few hundred percent and almost caused riots. [1] Feeding the population cheap stuff is a national political priority. You are right though, that the rocks are politically convenient to saber rattle over without having to worry about Japan too much (who does have bigger valueless rocks to fight over with China -- who is solving their problems my simply manufacturing new islands where they want them). 1 - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/world/asia/15kimchi.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/world/asia/15kimchi.html