Those who have experienced or witnessed it firsthand can describe it better than I, but I was quite serious when I spoke of the choleric grudges some in Asian Pacific countries carry against Japan. Only this week did a reader of Jonah Goldberg's reveal how elaborate and deep-seated this bigotry can be. The reader happened to be of Korean descent; ironic, since Tokyo and Seoul continue to respond to authoritarian threats in their midst antithetically.

Via Tim in Seoul, the South Korean head of the Ministry of Unification — a bureau more dedicated to appeasing the maniacal Kim Jong Il regime than helping Koreans trapped above the 38th Parallel — has gone Rene Magritte in responding to Pyongyang's official declaration of atomic armaments, telling us "ceci n'est pas maraudeur nucléaire."

Tokyo, on the other hand, is quietly preparing:

The Cabinet on Tuesday finalized a bill to revise the Self-Defense Forces Law, to enable the SDF to launch interceptor missiles in the event of a missile attack on Japan without a mobilization order issued by the prime minister. The government submitted the bill to the Diet the same day.

Under the current law, the SDF is allowed to launch interceptor missiles only after a mobilization order is issued by the prime minister. The revised bill would expand the list of cases in which the launch of an interceptor was authorized to include two new scenarios.

...Defense Agency Director General Yoshinori Ono said at a press conference Tuesday: "I hope the second scenario will cover all possible threats (of a missile attack) except for when there is a clear sign (of an imminent threat). (The MD system) must be prepared to respond around the clock and throughout the year."

Another poke in the eyes of Japanophobes is Tokyo's consideration of a military deployment — to help stop Sudanese genocide. In spite of the attending ridicule, one of our fellow democracies in the Orient is taking its responsibilities far more seriously than the other.