There could be trouble ahead.

[Stealhead]

Originally Posted by Oberon

The whole area is a mess in regards to territorial claims, although the real fun comes a bit further south-west in the Spratlys, just about everyone in the area claims that dirt.
Then there's the Liancourt Rocks, that's a South Korea vs Japan affair.
Taiwan fits into the issue somewhere as well.

It's all good fun, but not likely that South Korea will go to war with the PRC, they might be able to trash the DPRK, but they're punching above their weight against Beijing.

That is true but you forgot to mention that pretty much the entire East China Sea and the South China Sea are heavily disputed.China,Japan,Vietnam,North and South Korea and the Philippines all make claims that conflict with other nations on both land claims and fishing claims "economic zones".I course I am fairly sure you are already aware of this fact but others might not be.

@Red October as Skybird said all of this has much more to do with having the largest "exclusive economic zone" which allows a nation to control who is using the sea and land for anything economic fishing and what all else. A good example would be the Bearing Sea between Alaska and Russia.The US maintains a very large exclusive economic zone which covers most of the Bearing Sea a Russian,Canadian or Japanese (or any other nations) fishing vessel must pay a fee to have permission to fish or do anything profitable in those waters while a ship registered in the US does not have pay these fees and must only obey federal regulations on what they can and can not take the industrial version of game laws.


This is what China claims the darkest tone is undisputed the other two are disputed between other nations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ch...omic_Zones.png

A closer look at areas claimed by both China and Japan http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/ima...hinaSeaMap.png