Category: Dokdo Madness

It is ironic that South Korea is holding defense drills against a threat that will never happen from the Japanese while at the same time opening up the DMZ and not training against the North Korean threat that is an actual threat to attack the entire country, not just a pile of rocks in the ocean:

Despite bad weather, South Korean troops kicked off a regular exercise Thursday to hone their combined capabilities to defend Dokdo, a pair of rocky islets in the East Sea.
The two-day maritime drills involve the 3,200-ton Gwanggaeto the Great destroyer and several other Navy and Coast Guard ships.
The military canceled a plan to mobilize such aircraft as F-15K fighter, P-3C maritime surveillance plane and UH-60 helicopter on the day due to inclement weather, according to a Navy official. It has also postponed a Marine Corps landing exercise until Friday.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This is one way for the ROK to conduct a military exercise that won’t get North Korea upset:

Here is the latest on the Dokdo front:

South Korea urged Japan on Tuesday to retract its repeated territorial claim over Dokdo, a pair of rocky outcroppings in the East Sea, saying it will only impede efforts to move forward bilateral ties.

It was a reminder of longstanding diplomatic rifts between the neighboring countries despite a call for firm unity among regional powers to handle Pyongyang’s recent peace overtures.

In a statement, South Korea’s foreign ministry denounced the description of sovereignty over Dokdo in Japan’s yearly foreign policy document, known as the Diplomatic Bluebook, reported to the Cabinet earlier in the day.  [Yonhap]

Maybe the ROK government should summon the Japanese ambassador and have Flag Eater Man,  Finger Chopping Lady, Knife in the Gut Man, Weed Killer Man, the Dokdo Riders, and Bee Man all to waiting for him so they can demonstrate their Dokdo patriotism.  Despite the hyperbole over this issue, I believe Korea clearly wins on the Dokdo debate, but why muddle this issue with the stupid East Sea issue?:

The ministry summoned Koichi Mizushima, minister at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, to lodge a formal protest. He refused to answer questions from reporters, entering the ministry building.

Kim Yong-kil, director general for the ministry’s Northeast Asian affairs, told the minister that Seoul can’t accept Tokyo’s unilateral naming of the body of waters between the two nations, officials said.

In the diplomatic paper, Japan said the waters shouldn’t be called the East Sea.

“In particular, (Kim) made clear that (the government) can’t accept Japan’s unjust claim regarding the East Sea name,” the ministry’s spokesman Noh Kyu-duk said at a press briefing. “(He) stressed that the East Sea is the correct name that has been used for more than 2,000 years in our country.”

f Koreans want to call the body of water East Sea I have no problem with that, but internationally the term Sea of Japan makes more sense.  That is because East Sea is not East of Japan and thus makes no sense for an international observer not invested in the Dokdo/East Sea issue when they see it on a map.  Korea would make a better case for renaming the body of water if they had a more generic description such as “Asian Sea”.

They could always go with my suggestion and just call it the “Nameless Sea”.

There is a need for a country to register a protest about stuff like this. I’ve been with Korean diplomats trying to get American school districts to stop calling a body of water the “Sea of Japan.” But at some point you’re just embarrassing yourself. https://t.co/0lk78sYcv6

— the oranckay (@oranckay) April 25, 2018

It would not be an Inter-Korean Summit without a Dokdo reference:

South Korea has custom made furniture for Friday’s summit between President Moon Jae-in and the North’s leader Kim Jong Un ― with chairs featuring Dokdo controlled by Seoul but claimed by Tokyo.

One thing the rival Koreas share is a resentment of Japan, which imposed brutal colonial rule on the peninsula from 1910 to 1945, and the gesture is likely to irritate Tokyo.

Japan and the South are both US allies but their relationship is strained by historical and territorial issues, including Dokdo, islands controlled by Seoul but claimed by Tokyo.

The new walnut chairs to be used by the two leaders’ seven-strong delegations at Friday’s summit at Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) each feature a map of the peninsula.

The tiny islands are clearly marked, pictures released by the Blue House showed Wednesday.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but hatred of Japan is one thing that politicians from both North and South Korea can agree on.

I am surprised Lufthansa had Dokdo on the map in the first place considering it is such a tiny terrain feature:

German airline Lufthansa has come under criticism in Korea after deciding to remove Dokdo, Korea’s easternmost islets that Japan falsely claims as its own, from its in-flight maps.

“The software has been updated and will be installed on the aircraft at the end of this week at the latest. The name of the island will not be shown anymore,” Lufthansa told The Korea Times Tuesday.

The company also said it had no intention to insult any party and regretted any inconvenience the decision might cause.

The decision came after a Japanese passenger’s complaint about the description of Dokdo, which was written in English and Japanese, on a Tokyo-Munich flight in December. The passenger claimed the name should be “Takeshima.”

It is unclear whether Lufthansa will remove Dokdo from the aircraft for that route only or all of them, including planes that fly from Korea’s Incheon to Frankfurt and Munich.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but of course some Koreans are calling for a boycott of Lufthansa in order to get it to restore Dokdo to its inflight map.

This photo, taken on Feb. 14, 2018, shows Tokyo’s government website announcing a draft guideline for Japanese high school textbooks to state that Dokdo, a set of South Korea-controlled islets in the East Sea, belong to Japan. This is the first time that Tokyo has specified its territorial claim to Dokdo in high school textbooks. (Yonhap)

Here is the latest from the Dokdo frontlines:

Nearly 1,200 foreigners are “living” on the easternmost Dokdo island, according to data released on Sunday.

The foreigners are among 36,000 “honorary residents” recognized by the Dokdo management office on Ulleung Island, an inhabited island west of Dokdo.

They do not actually live there, but are documented as residents in a promotional campaign for the island.

Since 2010, the office has issued “honorary Dokdo residency” to certificate-seeking visitors regardless of nationality to promote South Korea’s sovereignty over Dokdo.  [Korea Times]

I went to Dokdo before 2010 and thus was not offered honorary residence on the island.  Personally I think it is pretty stupid to accept an honorary residence from some place I would never want to live at.

One of the stupidest disputes in Asia continues:

South Korea on Thursday began a two-day military exercise for the defense of Dokdo, a set of rocky islets in the East Sea to which Japan lays territorial claim.

“The Navy will conduct the regular Dokdo defense exercise aimed at preventing the infiltration of external forces into the South Korean territory in conjunction with a flotilla-level field exercise by the Navy’s First Fleet,” according to the Navy. The First Fleet is based in the East Sea.

The exercise is conducted twice a year and involves the Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Air Force and police. Navy destroyers, fighter jets and patrol aircraft are participating in the drill, the Navy said.

The exercise immediately drew an angry reaction from Japan, just as past exercises have done. Japan has long claimed the islets, which lie closer to South Korea than Japan, a fact that causes diplomatic tension with South Korea.

The Tokyo filed a protest with Seoul, saying the exercise is “unacceptable,” Japan’s Kyodo News reported, quoting a senior official.  [Yonhap]

So basically the ROK military is exercising for something that is never going to happen because the Japanese are not going to invade Dokdo and the Koreans know that.  This is basically just a public relations stunt for domestic political consumption.  With that said I think the Japanese government would be better served by just keeping quiet instead of criticizing all things Dokdo related.

The Dokdo public relations stunt I want to see is to have the ROK government bring Flag Eater Man,  Finger Chopping Lady, Knife in the Gut Man, Weed Killer Man, the Dokdo Riders, and Bee Man all to Dokdo in a combined display of ROK patriotism.

It seems to me that Japanese geographers would not include Dokdo on their maps in the 1800’s because no one cared about two worthless rocks in the Sea of Japan at the time.  The two rocks only gained value in modern times when national borders and thus exclusive economic zones could be tied to them.  Using the logic this Korean researcher is using does he support Japan’s claim to the Kuril Islands based on this map?:

A scholar recently unveiled maps of a government-approved Japanese textbook which show that Japan did not perceive Dokdo as its territory in the 19th century.

The findings will give weight to Korea’s ownership of the islets off the country’s east coast, which Japan claims as its own, referring to them as Takeshima Islands.

Prof. Han Cheol-ho of Dongguk University’s history education department displayed maps of a geography textbook compiled by Okamura Matsutaro in 1886 in a presentation at a conference held at the Northeast Asian History Foundation’s Institute of Dokdo Research last week.

The textbook’s map of Asia does not mark Dokdo as its territory. On the map is a red line marking Japanese territory, but not only is Dokdo not included in the area inside the red line, Dokdo is not marked on the map at all.

The border lines are marked the same way in textbooks compiled by geologist Manziro Yamagami in 1902 and 1903.

“The textbook’s map of Asia has the Oki Islands marked, but not Ulleungdo and Dokdo,” Yonhap News Agency quoted Han as saying.

“If Japan perceived Dokdo as its territory it would have drawn the islets on the map and stretched the line to include Dokdo.”  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.