Early Weekend Open Thread #263

For others’ convenience, I will repost GB’s post about the Dokdo/Takeshima controversy:

I have studied the history of Dokdo (Liancourt Rocks), and Koreans were not part of it until the Japanese started carrying them there on Japanese fishing boats in the early 1900s. The Japanese have maps of Liancourt Rocks dating back to the 1600s, but Korea has no old maps of the Rocks under any name.

Numerous Japanese documents from as far back as the 1600s talk about Japanese fishermen traveling to Liancourt Rocks and fishing there, but Korea has no old documents showing that Koreans ever traveled there before the Japanese started taking them there on Japanese fishing boats in the 1900s. There is only two references in all of Korean history to an unnamed island visible to the east of Ulleungdo that was probably Liancourt Rocks, but one of those references clearly stated it was Japanese territory and the other “suggested” it.

One of those references is the following July 22, 1714 entry in the official records of the Korean King Sukjong, which was part of a report on East Coast defenses. Korean fishermen told a Korean government inspector worried about a possible invasion from Japan the following:

“I listened carefully to the people in the ports (浦人) who said, “Pyeonghae (平海) and Uljin (蔚珍) are closest to Ulleungdo, and there are no obstructions along the sea route. Visible to the east of Ulleung is an island attached to Japanese territory.”

鬱陵之東 (East of Ulleung) 島嶼相望 (an island is visible) 接于倭境 (that is attached to Japanese territory).

Koreans claim that “Dokdo” was made part of Uldo (Ulleungdo) County in 1900, but the document they point to as evidence does not mention Dokdo; it only mentions Ulleungdo, its neighboring island of Jukdo (2km offshore), and Seokdo (rocky islets). Some Koreans claim that “Seokdo” was a reference to Dokdo, but it was, in fact, only a catchall phrase used to include all the other “rocky islets” around Ulleungdo, including Ulleungdo’s second largest neighboring island of Gwaneumdo.

Also, when the Japanese Resident-General asked the Korean Ministry of Interior in 1906 to clarify what islands belonged to Uldo County, Dokdo was not mentioned. In fact, it was excluded from Uldo County by the boundries given for the county, which was described as being 24km from east to west and 16km from north to south. Dokdo is outside that boundry since it is about 90km to the southeast of Ulleungdo. The following is a translation of a July 13, 1906 Korean newspaper article describing the Korean Ministry of Interior’s response to the Japanese Resident-General.

Facts on Arrangement of Uldo County

The Resident-General sent an official letter to the Interior Ministry asking it to clarify what islands belonged to Ulleungdo, which is under the administration of Samcheok County in Gangwon Province, and the year and month the county office was established. The response was that the post of Ulleungdo Administrator was established on May 20, 1898, and then on October 25, 1900, the government decided to post a county magistrate with the county office being at Daehadong (台霞洞). It said the islands under the authority of the said county were Jukdo (竹島) and Seokdo (石島), and that it was sixty ri from east to west and forty ri from north to south for a total of 200 ri.

Koreans occupied Liancourt Rocks in the 1950s after their claim to the Rocks was rejected by the US government and the 1952 Treaty of Peace with Japan. US Secretary of State Dean Rusk rejected Korea’s claim to Liancourt Rocks in an August 9, 1951 letter. He wrote the following to the South Korean ambassador in Washington.

“As regards the island of Dokdo, otherwise known as Takeshima or Liancourt Rocks, this normally uninhabited rock formation was according to our information never treated as part of Korea and, since about 1905, has been under the jurisdiciton of the Oki Islands Branch of Shimane Prefecture of Japan. The island does not appear ever before to have been claimed by Korea….”

A 1954 report from US Special Ambassador James Van Fleet confirms that the US believed Liancourt Rocks to belong to Japan and the peace treaty with Japan allowed Japan to keep them.

“The Island of Dokto (otherwise called Liancourt and TakeShima) is in the Sea of Japan approximately midway between Korea and Honshu (131.80E, 36.20N). This Island is, in fact, only a group of barren, uninhabited rocks. When the Treaty of Peace with Japan was being drafted, the Republic of Korea asserted its claims to Dokto but the United States concluded that they remained under Japanese sovereignty and the Island was not included among the Islands that Japan released from its ownership under the Peace Treaty. The Republic of Korea has been confidentially informed of the United States position regarding the islands but our position has not been made public. Though the United States considers that the islands are Japanese territory, we have declined to interfere in the dispute. Our position has been that the dispute might properly be referred to the International Court of Justice and this suggestion has been informally conveyed to the Republic of Korea.”

In 1954, South Korea rejected Japan’s request to allow the International Court of Justice to settle the dispute.