ABSTRACT
Does the eruption of a militarized interstate dispute between two established East Asian democracies, Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK), in 2006 pose a challenge to the democratic peace? More fundamentally, have the underlying normative mechanisms of the democratic peace been present on the South Korean side of the Japan–Korea democratic dyad? Has the ROK's de facto alignment with authoritarian China on a number of issues against democratic Japan (and to a lesser extent the USA) challenged the democratic peace generalization that democracies only align with other democracies and not with authoritarian states?
