The Korean peninsula has a long history of dealing with invasion and foreign rule, wedged as it is between larger powers Russia, China and Japan. That experience gave rise to a proverb in the country: “When whales fight, it’s the shrimp’s back that gets broken.”South Korea – itself the result of a war 70 years ago that drew in the US and China and split the peninsula into two Koreas – is hardly a shrimp by economic measures, being home to industrial heavyweights like Samsung Group and Hyundai…

This post was originally published on South China Morning Post.