Uri Party lawmaker Kim Won-wung said during an MBC radio show that Korea has much more historical ground to claim sovereignty over Japan’s Tsushima Island (Korean: Daema-do) than Japan does over Korea’s Dokdo Islets, and that the time had come for Seoul to actively consider plans to turn Tsushima into an international disputed territory.
He said that because Korea’s historical claim over the rocky islands in the Korea Straits was clear, Seoul needed to respond aggressively, and that we needed to recall that Korea’s first president, Syngman Rhee, had once officially expressed a claim on the territory.
He also pointed out that all the maps officially printed during the Joseon Dynasty included Tsushima as Korean territory, and not once during the kingdom’s 500-year history were the islands part of Japan. I have no idea if that is true, and I’m way too tired to find out.
I will say this, however. Rep. Kim deserves a medal. This guy fights with everyone. Last September, he led a parliamentary movement to have the 1909 Gando Agreement annulled so Korea could claim parts of the Chinese northeast.
For more Korea-Japan tension fun, here’s some English links you may enjoy:
Ambassador Takano Visits Japan Amid Growing Tensions
Seoul seeks to dampen rising anger at Japan
S. Korean Legislators to Visit Dokdo to Protest Japan’s Claims
Japanese Residents Are Also on the Move
PM Wants Joint Korea-Japan Liberation Events Pruned
Also, Ampontan over at Japundit wonders when they will ever learn.
15 Comments
I’m not so sure about Tushima as I seem to remember Japanese living on the island since practically antiquity. The reason I say so is because I remember once attending a lecture a few years back which mentioned mentioned the abortive Mongol invasion of Japan. It turned out that Tushima was held by some Japanese samurai who was promptly executed by the Mongols and the island was used as a interm point for ships going into Japan.
Here is a wonderful article on Tushima.
Here is a wonderful article on Tushima.
This is from one of the best internet resources around: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsushima_province
The nearest port on the Korean coast at Busan is 49.5 km away and the nearest Japanese port of Fukuoka is 147 km away.
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The inhabitants of the islands were apparently Japanese, speaking Japanese dialects. Since ancient times, the islands have belonged to Japan as her province, though some of the earliest colonizers of the island are believed to be former subjects of the fallen Korean kingdom Baekje during the late 7th century.
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After the withdrawal of Mongol influence from Goryeo in Korea, the island became a haven for pirates, who took advantage of the constant trade between Korea and Japan. In 1419, King Sejong of Joseon in Korea ordered his trusted general Lee Jong Mu to clear the island of these pirates. At this time, Tsushima came under the sphere of influence of Joseon.
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In the late 16th century, as Toyotomi Hideyoshi united the various feudal barons under his control and looked to unite all factions with a common cause, he looked to invade Joseon. In preparation for this war, Tsushima became the main naval base for this invasion. From this point, Japan developed a strong foothold in Tsushima.
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After World War II, there arose a movement in South Korea to claim Tsushima, touting its historical relations to the various kingdoms of Korea. This was made most evident when President Syngman Rhee, in a beginning-of-the-year press conference in 1949, formally requested that Japan return the island to Korean rule. However, this claim was never seriously considered by the military government of General Douglas MacArthur. With the outbreak of Korean War the next year and the economic struggles that South Korea faced in the following decade, talk of any territorial dispute disappeared.
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Good background, and it just goes to show you how the tide of history sweeps backwards and forwards over the years, and land changes hands all the time. I’d love to know on what basis international tribunals use any kind of historical claims to settle disputes of today. Where do you draw the line?
Plunge, great link. Haven’t read that in ages. There is this one quote, “”Is the fishing
good there?” he asked. (A Korean Japanese in regard to New York when told there were koreans there) When I told him it was easier to find Korean
doctors and lawyers there than commercial fishermen, he was speechless.”
But Koreans seems to have cornered the Fulton Fish Market and all the Sushi joints.
I think it is pretty much firmly established historically speaking, that the Japanese have always inhabited Tsushima. Heres a good overview of the issue over at Koreaweb. http://koreaweb.ws/pipermail/k.....01038.html
Apparently in the Chronicles of Wei from the 3rd century CE, a Chinese ambassador makes mention that the locals use the same titles as the “Wa” do on the main islands. Tsushima, Japanese for 1700 years and counting.
What does it mean to say “Tsushima was Japanese?” Just how close was Tsushima to Japan, considering the disunity and regionalism of the Japanese feudal era? The island has always been the way-point between Korea and Japan, and a notorious base for the Wae pirates… and the Wae pirates apparently included no small number of Chinese and Koreans. Yes, King T’aejo and Sejong both invaded the place, but neither left a military presence on the island to secure it and “incorporate” it into Korea. IF THEY HAD, then Tsushima would be “Korean” today….
But they didnt.
Have to look it up but wasn’t a treaty already signed over all islands except Dokdo/Takeshima?
Hamel wrote: “This is from one of the best internet resources around: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsushima_province“
Everyone must be aware that, by construction, Wikipedia is NOT an authoritative source. Especially, articles about Korea are fiercely disputed. It’s a mess.
About the post at Japundit, it says: “Great Britain colonized the United States for more than 150 years”, which is a nonsense: the British (and the French and the Spaniards) colonized a territory which was not the USA.
Koreans plan to take over Tsushima.
http://www.hanbitkorea.com/html/daemado_002.html
“Everyone must be aware that, by construction, Wikipedia is NOT an authoritative source. Especially, articles about Korea are fiercely disputed. It??s a mess.”
Those guys are from VANK.
Cyber terror organization
http://www.prkorea.com
Uri assemblyman Kim Won-wung is a total buffoon
http://oranckay.net/blog/?theDate=200312223
who should never be paid much attention to. I’ve heard that he actually asks his aides each morning, “what were the netizens saying over night?”. All politicians calculate their moves to score the most popularity but the stunts he pulls are just clownish. Anytime there’s an issue most of the country’s pissed about expect him to come up with something stupid to say. Or do, and indeed, sometimes he does do some amusing tricks for the cameras.
While of course more sound than Japan’s claim to Dokdo, any Korean claim to Tsushima/Daemado at this point in history would not be persuasive, even to most of the Korean public. There is a famous song, . loved by the bite-your-finger-and-write-in-blood types who protest about Dokdo. At one point the words go like this: “????????? ?????? ????????? ??????? ???????? ????????” = “Hawai’i is American land; dunno about Daemado, but Dokdo is Korean land.” Little do they know that there is some question about whether Hawai’i really should belong in the US, but as you can see the generally accepted view among Korea’s most passionate defenders of Dokdo is that the same kind of claims can’t be made about Daemado/Tsushima. The words and music are here:
http://www.edutimes.co.kr/Serv.....2whereStr=
While I don’t need any more convincing that Tsushima/Daemado belongs to Japan, I must say that the argument that the residents were “always Japanese” and “spoke Japanese” is only a demonstration of ignorance about language and ethnicity. Throughout most of human history the dialect spoken by the people on that island cannot have been understood by most of the people residing in what we now call “Korea” and “Japan.” It’s not like Jeju was speaking what we know as Korean until recent decades, or that people in Edo/Kyoto/Tokyo always understood Okinawan or the dialects spoken on “Japanese” islands farther off than that. For that matter, some say Okinawans aren’t Japanese (http://www.okinawa.com/faq.html#TargetThree) or at least weren’t for most of history. Similarly, the people on Tsushima/Daemado are who they are but they naturally get thrown in with the country that has held it and fed them standardized education/television. That country has not been Korea, so “Dokdo is Korea’s, but dunno about Daemado.”
“some say Okinawans aren??t Japanese”
Describing an Okinawan as Japanese is like describing a Scot as an Englishman. If you think Koreans are pissed at Japan, you should meet my grampa.
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