You’ll be happy to know that despite the chill (maybe) that has overcome intra-Korean ties in the wake of Pyongyang’s nuclear test, the two Koreas have agreed to add the Dokdo islets to the “Korean Peninsula flag,” or hanbando-gi, which is used during intra-Korean events.
North Korea had been placing Dokdo on their version of the flag since 2000, but South Korea was not as part of its “quiet diplomacy” toward Japan.
Seoul recently decided it would be best to add the rocks to the flag since Dokdo was, in its estimate, “historically, geographically and by international law” Korean territory. After the decision was made, discussion were held with Northern officials concerning the matter.
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Maybe they can issue a joint declaration saying that North Korean nukes will be used to protect Dokdo against Japan. It is only a matter of time before the netizens start saying stuff like that anyway.
“I say this calls for a really stupid and futile gesture.”
‘Otter’ in Animal House
I wonder if the map will be up to scale because 1) Dokdo is pretty far from the mainland and, 2) it is pretty small.
I’m also curious about what will be the reaction of the inhabitants of the other Korean islands, most of which are probably bigger than Dodko.
By the way, this gives me the impression Roh is desperatly trying to salvage his popularity ratings (correct me if I’m wrong, but this certainly wasn’t a North Korean idea). Am I the only one who sees irony in this? After all, South and North Korea have their own border dispute, which has resulted in the death of South Korean sailors.
On pretty much any map of the Korean Peninsula that actually shows Dokdo, the islets are out of scale with the rest of the map. So yes… Korea is artificially enlarging the islets in order for them to show up on the silly Korean Peninsula flag. Of course, I can’t help but notice that Jindo and Kojedo appear to be missing from the simplified coastline of Korea (although they’re both orders of magnitude larger) — those Dokdo islets must really be a pair of special seabird-shit-covered rocks.
I’m just glad they set aside trivial issues like the family reunions to sort this out.
Medieval heraldic artisans would blazon this flag as such:
Argent, a rabbit sejant erect azure, seagull dung azure to sinister base.
Can maps of Korea even be trusted to begin with? If maps aren’t drawn to scale but rather the way people want them to be seem now, what’s to say that hasn’t always been the case?
At school here, many of the Korean students will include images of a unified Korea in their artwork. Everyone stays quiet about it because there really is no problem, it just looks silly to Japanese or Americans.
In a friend of mine’s most recent project, he included Dokdo hugely out of scale to the point that it was about 1/5th the size of the whole Korean peninsula, included a drastically reduced in size Japan, and left out the Okinawa islands. The teacher asked him to at least include Okinawa. I asked him later if Japan was drawn to scale, and he said, “no, it’s smaller.” When I asked him why, I was surprisingly not surprised by his answer: “Because I’m Korean.” … So reality is not part of your world?
If that is the way he looks at the world, and his view is not unique to him*, is his view also not unique to his generation? Korea has produced a lot of maps about Dokdo, but as I said before, I can fire up a copy machine and make maps too. Are they of quality or legitimacy?
* Another example: Yesterday 50 students from a Korean art University (I’ll leave the name out for now) came to our University and we shared our works with each other. One of their assignments was to draw an image with the Korean peninsula as an outline. The outline of the Korean peninsula that the teacher assigned them included about half of China.
“I’m just glad they set aside trivial issues like the family reunions to sort this out.”
Did you notice how the North Koreans who participate in these reunions are often ‘important’ figures in North Korea? It’s not a coincidence. It’s propaganda aimed at the reports that the North Korean government persecutes North Koreans who were originally from the South.
OhMiGawd, it seems my fav isle Bogildo is not on that Flag…
Does that then imply, or even concede, that it belongs to the Yellow-dwarf Pirates???
In factoid, the entire Yeosu-bando seems to be missing…
and they’re bidding to host an International Expo!
Ohmy, and Ganghwa-do got the gas-face, too!
I’m not sure if I mentioned it before but both North Korea and South Korea released Dokdo postage stamps.
Oh, brother.
Anyone see the proposed next flag of the unified korea?
[link]http://www.mapsofworld.com/images/maps_of_india_asia_outline.jpg[/link]
Ohmy, Ieodo is missing too!
I think I figured out why all the other Korean islands (other than Cheju) are missing - the map represents Korea after the polar ice caps melt due to global warming. Although what we know of as Dokdo now would almost certainly be covered by water deep enough to cover most of Korea’s other islands, the Korean government intends to actually make Dokdo tall enough not to go completely underwater. Why, you ask? Well, so that they can keep fighting about them with Japan.
As long as the map doesn’t include Parangdo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socotra_Rock
The article also links to the following one…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngman_Rhee_line
Makes me wonder…Since when have Koreans stopped thinking that every decision made by Sygman Rhee was not a mistake?
Just noticed…”was a mistake”
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[...] -South Korea has agreed to add the disputed Dokdo islets to it’s unity flag, which is used when the South/North Korean combined team attends international sporting events. It’s great to see the Koreas working together to stir up nationalist hatred of Japan, isn’t it? [...]