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Post by Admin on Sept 19, 2019 20:25:03 GMT
Moon Geun Young recently shared photos of herself wearing a hoodie that reads, “Do you know Dokdo?” with a bright smile on her face. Along with the photos, Moon Geun Young shared the caption, “Do you know? I’m all for the Dokdo campaign! Dokdo is our land!” http://instagram.com/p/B2Za6XsBhaU In response to Moon Geun Young’s support for the Dokdo campaign claiming Dokdo as Korean land, Japanese fans started bombarding her Instagram account with comments of disapproval and disappointment. But Korean fans are coming to Moon Geun Young’s defense with comments such as “Thank you for always being aware of these things“, “What’s wrong with calling our land our land?“, and “Japanese people should just shut their mouths“. Dokdo is an island situated between Japan and Korea, and the two countries have been disputing over the ownership of the land for over 300 years.
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Post by Admin on Sept 20, 2019 18:44:04 GMT
South Korea has begun two days of war games near a set of disputed islands that are also claimed by Japan. The two countries have long disagreed on who has rightful claim to the islands known as Dokdo in Korean and Takeshima in Japanese. The islands are "obviously an inherent part of the territory of Japan," Kenji Kanasugi, the director general of Japan's foreign ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, told the South Korean Embassy in Tokyo in a statement. The drills began Sunday, just days after Seoul decided to scrap a military intelligence sharing agreement with Tokyo. The latest flare-up in tensions between the two Asian nations is rooted in Japan's brutal 1910-1945 occupation of the Korean peninsula. A major source of friction is how to compensate those forced into labor and sexual slavery in the colonist era. Japan says the reparation issue was resolved with a 1965 treaty that normalized Japan - South Korea relations. Japan has complained that subsequent South Korean governments have not accepted further Japanese apologies and attempts to make amends.
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Post by Admin on Feb 20, 2020 21:51:48 GMT
The rocky outcrop, known as Dokdo in South Korea and Takeshima in Japan, is considered by both countries part of their own respective territories, and the dispute over them has been an ongoing spoiler in bilateral relations. Last month, the Japanese government told its Foreign Ministry staff not to use Korean Airlines for a month, in response to the company’s decision to conduct the inaugural flight of its A380 passenger jet above the isles.
The Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers’ attempt to enter ‘Dokdo’, via South Korea, meanwhile, had been long anticipated. Indeed, the Lee Myung Bak government in Seoul had advised the conservative Japanese politicians to refrain from visiting, given the heated civil response it would elicit throughout South Korea.
On the face of it, the two countries have every reason to overcome this seemingly petty territorial dispute and reach an agreement over resource sharing in their neighbouring waters. Given how much there is at stake in Northeast Asia – North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, rivalry between the United States and China, latent military hostilities across the Taiwan Strait – the two countries would do well to move past the Dokdo/Takeshima dispute and instead focus on the big picture of peace and stability in Northeast Asia.
However, to try to understand South Korea-Japan relations by focusing on the dynamics of the contemporary relationship is to get things upside-down. Add in an entanglement of historical regional resentments and a very important truth emerges: from the South Korean perspective, the dispute over these rocky outcrops is the big picture.
The emotional potency of the ‘Dokdo’ issue in South Korea reveals just how powerful historical memory is. This issue brings together all Koreans, no matter what their political inclination – a rare occurrence in a country that is itself deeply ideologically and politically divided.
It’s this historical memory that is responsible for Korea’s unwillingness to take this dispute to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). From the South Korean perspective, losing ‘Dokdo’ would be akin to the post-facto legitimization of Japanese colonial rule. On the one hand, Koreans think that as long as they have effective jurisdiction, there’s no point taking the risk that they may lose the islands. But more importantly, referral of the case to the ICJ appears to concede that Japanese claims to the islands are valid.
For Koreans, then, this latest incident invokes strong nationalist sentiments and lingering resentment over the war crimes committed by the Japanese during their occupation of the peninsula. Thus, while outsiders counsel calm and meeting half-way, this will be a very difficult sell for the Lee government under current circumstances.
It’s important to understand the strong emotional significance of the islands and the role that national identity plays – in both countries, but particularly in Korea. Any concessions on the part of Korean lawmakers would be akin to political suicide, and so they are unlikely. Likewise, it’s improbable that Japan will simply stand back from the dispute and hand over sovereignty. It’s also clear that, for as long as the two countries remain unable to even begin public conversations over the matter, diplomatic relations will improve only very slowly, if at all.
Conversations need to begin and they need to go straight to the core of the issue: an acknowledgement of how deeply the Japanese occupation of Korea strikes at the heart of national identity in that country, and the symbolic role that the Dokdo/Takeshima island dispute plays in this.
A solution thus demands that Japan take the first step and acknowledge that Korean claims to the territory are closely linked to historical resentments over the behaviour of colonial Japan. Japan’s annexation of the islands was among the first in a series of actions that led to the colonization of the peninsula, and Korean outrage to Japan’s ongoing claims to the territory has everything to do with this and little to do with the legalistic historical arguments the Japanese have been putting on the table to support their claims.
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