Who Was Nakai Yozaburo?

On June 5th, Yozaburo Nakai��s request came through when he and three others were given permission by the Shimane prefectural government to hunt sea lions at Dokdo.   In the year that followed, the prefectural government posted a territorial sign and conducted inspections and surveys of Dokdo.   On April 24, 1939, a decision to incorporate the island under the jurisdiction of Goka Village was made by the Goka Village Assembly on Oki Island, Shimane Prefecture.   Imperial Japan had also made use of Dokdo in a military capacity, when they named the islets "Maizaru" Naval Station on August 17, 1940, restricting the island to purely military uses.

With Japan��s defeat in the Pacific War in 1945, the victorious Allied Powers renounced the Japanese claim to Dokdo.  Under U.S. military occupation (1945-1952), the highest governmental authority in Japan was the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), which delimited Japanese administrative territory.   SCAP��s first major opinion concerning the territory of postwar Japan was cited in an instruction SCAP gave to the Government of Occupied Japan.   The order, SCAPIN (SCAP instruction) #677 of January 29, 1946 specifically outlined Japanese territory and stated that the islands disputed between Japan and Korea- Utsuryo Island (Ullungdo), Liancourt Rocks (Dokdo), and Quelpart Island (Chejudo) were to be excluded from Japan's administrative authority.  However, to SCAPIN 677 was added this caveat: "nothing in this directive shall be construed as an indication of Allied policy relating to the ultimate determination of the minor islands referred to in Article 8 of the Potsdam Declaration."   Dokdo��s exclusion from Japan remained SCAP policy throughout the occupation, (another instruction, SCAPIN 1033 of June 22, 1946, prohibited Japanese nationals from approaching within 12 miles of Dokdo).  With Dokdo��s territorial status yet to be determined by a peace treaty between Japan and the allied powers, U.S. authorities in Japan decided to use the island as a bombing range.

In June 1947, the Japanese Foreign Ministry appealed to the U.S. occupation authorities over Japan's claim to sovereignty over both Ullungdo and Dokdo in a treatise entitled, "Minor Islands in the Sea of Japan", hoping to influence U.S. opinion in any future deliberations concerning the island that would take place in the upcoming peace treaty negotiations.   The Japanese ministers denied Korea's ownership on the grounds that "no Korean name exists for the island" and that Dokdo "is not shown on the maps made in Korea".   The Japanese document also argued that the settlers on the island had just arrived recently and that the island��s development was "still in an incipient stage", and because of this, it was not within the Korean government��s ability to develop the island.

The location of Dokdo in relation to Korea and Japan.

The Japanese efforts to regain Dokdo during the negotiations of the peace treaty eventually failed.   Although the 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty between Japan and the former allied powers settled sovereignty over the islands of Ullungdo, Kommundo, and Chejudo (all to Korea), the ownership of Dokdo was not settled in the treaty.

The reasons for the omission of Dokdo��s sovereignty from the treaty are many.   One important reason why Dokdo��s sovereignty was left unanswered by the peace treaty was that the president of the Republic of Korea (ROK), Yi Seung-man (Syngman Rhee) did not effectively focus his government��s attention on the ownership of Dokdo when negotiating with U.S. authorities over Korea��s territorial concerns.   The Korean president instead focused on an unrealistic demand for Korean sovereignty over Tsushima Island (as a form of war reparations from Japan, an idea which the drafters of the treaty never seriously entertained). Much of his attention was also focused on suppressing domestic political rivals than with maintaining his country��s territory.   In fact, the Rhee government never bothered to produce a scholarly, well-documented study of the Korean historical record on Dokdo that could offer the American drafters of the peace treaty an alternative to the Japanese Foreign Ministry��s monograph, "Minor Islands in the Sea of Japan".   The ROK only produced a thorough study on Dokdo in the Summer of 1953, long after the San Francisco Peace Treaty had gone into effect.

Even after the peace treaty was signed and talks on the normalization of relations between the ROK and Japan were underway, the Korean demand for recognition of their country��s sovereignty over Dokdo continued.   This was particularly the case after the Korean president announced the establishment of a territorial line (sometimes called the Rhee-Line, or Peace Line) in the East Sea/Sea of Japan on January 18, 1952, that encompassed Dokdo on Korea��s side of this line.   Another development that heightened the Dokdo issue in the minds of the Korean public was when a bombing incident at Dokdo on September 15, 1952 had raised awareness in Korea over the impending fate of the island. The growing demand from Korea placed U.S. authorities in the region in the undesirable situation in which the U.S. would have had to pick sides in a territorial dispute between Korea and Japan, whose cooperation with the U.S. and each other, was important to U.S. strategic designs.   The documentary record shows that the Americans increasingly attempted to distance themselves from the dispute.

U.S. Diplomatic and Military History of Dokdo (1945-1952)

What the American Military Occupation of Japan and Korea might mean for the sovereignty of Dokdo

The Korean Claim

Koreans have also pointed out the falsehoods in the Japanese Foreign Ministry-sponsored 1966 study by Kawakami Kenzo. Kawakami��s disparagement of Korean Choson Dynasty documentation has been shown to be baseless.   Futhermore, the claim that Dokdo was not (is not) visible to Korean eyes on Ullungdo is also a falsehood, since Dokdo is visible at a height of 120 meters or higher in elevation from Ullungdo, an island with a maximum elevation of 985 meters.

Japanese have also made claims that Japan��s "effective management" of Dokdo had been in place as early as the 17th Century, when the Japanese merchant families Otani and Murakawa obtained permission from the Japanese Government to travel to Ullungdo. Not only was Japan��s "effective management" of Dokdo highly improbable at this time (the merchant families were interested in exploiting Ullungdo, not Dokdo), it also creates a contradiction in the Japanese claim. In 1905, the Japanese recognized the islets as a terra nullius, and therefore ownerless (never having been managed) before that time.   This contradiction has never been fully addressed by official or unofficial sources in Japan.   Probably as a result of this contradiction, the Japanese Foreign Ministry Website no longer mentions the fact that Japan incorporated Dokdo as a terra nullius.

The Text of Imperial Ordinance No. 41 (Article 2), from October 25, 1900.   The Japanese Foreign Ministry website very conveniently avoids mention of this document, which was enacted at least four years before Japan claimed to have "incorporated" Dokdo.

Yet another problematic issue for the Japanese claim to Dokdo, particularly Japan��s 1905 ��incorporation��, is the existence of a land survey conducted by Korean authorities in 1900, known as Korean Government Imperial Ordinance No. 41 (Article 2), which stipulated that the Ullungdo-kun office was to have jurisdiction over Sokdo (Dokdo).   This Korean Government order was promulgated on October 25, 1900; over four whole years before Japan sequestered the island as a terra nullius.   Japanese critics of this ordinance assert that the island named in the document, Sokdo (in Sino-Korean characters), is not Dokdo, but refers to the island Kwanumdo; an island that is almost penninsular in appearance and in the far Northeastern corner of Ullungdo.   The evidence by which they conclude that Sokdo is Kwanumdo has never been explained.   It is difficult to believe that Sokdo is Kwanumdo, based on Kwanumdo��s history, appearance and topography, and as "Dokdo" and "Sokdo" essentially mean the same thing: "rock island".   As the text of the ordinance was written in Sino-Korean (Chinese) characters, the name appears as "Sok", and not the dialectal pure Korean, "Dok" (See similar dialectal transformations).

Historical Context: 1870s-1905

Therefore, despite the seemingly "legal" aspects of Japan��s incorporation of Dokdo into the metropolitan area of Japan, the Japanese action must be seen from an historical point of view.   It must be remembered that Dokdo was annexed together with the rest of Korea, when Japan extended its Empire over the former Korean state in the period, 1900-1910.   Japan��s ��acquistion�� of Dokdo resulted from an overall increase in Japanese aggression in Korea in the late 1800s, when Japan began to openly acquire monetary rights, railway, mining, and fishing concessions in Korea, in addition to conducting outright invasions of Korea��s outlying islands.   At first, when Japanese civilians began exploiting Korean islands like Ullungdo in the late 1800s, the Japanese Government acquiesed to Korean Government complaints and removed Japanese civilians who were illegally fishing and logging.   The Japanese Dajokan, the Council of State, even ruled in 1877 that "our country has nothing to do with" Ullungdo and Dokdo .  

However, the Japanese position changed after the Sino-Japanese (1894-1895) and Russo-Japanese (1904-1905) Wars, when these Japanese victories boosted Japan��s willingness and power to control the areas just outside of territorial Japan.   The Korean islands in this area of the East Sea/Sea of Japan (Kommundo, Chejudo, Ullungdo and Dokdo) were seen to have value to the Japanese military in the Russo-Japanese War, and the Japanese military essentially invaded these sovereign Korean territories to establish watchtowers and to link them via submarine telegraph cables.   It was also during this war with Russia that the Japanese public began to become aware of Dokdo, since many of the naval battles between the Russian and Japanese fleets took place in the area of Ullungdo and Dokdo.   Previously illegal Japanese civilian encroachment in this sea area (and indeed the rest of the Korean peninnsula) was encouraged by the Japanese Government in this period. It was in this milieu of Japanese imperialist advance into Korea that Nakai Yozaburo approached the Japanese Government to secure exclusive rights to Dokdo, resulting in the Japanese acquisition of the islets.

Therefore, the Japanese incorporation of Dokdo into Shimane Prefecture was intimately connected to, and a result of, Japan��s imperialist aggression in the early 20th Century.   However, the Foreign Ministry of Japan still clings to its belief that the territories it acquired in the period of 1894-1910 were "internationally recognized", and therefore were acquired validly.   It is quite curious that Japan continues to hold onto a claim of territorial sovereignty that was enacted at a time when Japan was engaged in imperial expansion.

A final thought on this issue...

The Cairo Conference of 1943 stipulated that "Japan will be expelled from all territories which she has taken by violence and greed [since the time of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95]." Considering Japan��s methods, there can be little doubt that Japan��s annexation of Dokdo in 1905 (along with all other Korean territories by 1910) falls within the definition of territories taken by greed, as defined by the Cairo Declaration. If Japan believes that its methods in acquiring Dokdo in 1905 were legitimate, then Japan must believe that it can still, by the same logic, claim sovereignty over the rest of the Korean Peninnsula...

Conflicts in the 1950s

In the 1950's, South Korea took active measures to stake its claim.   The first was in September 1952, when then president Yi Seung-man (Syngman Rhee) sent a research vessel to Dokdo (resulting in the aforementioned bombing incident), causing the territorial dispute to capture the public's attention in Korea and Japan for the first time. &nbsp

The conflict over dokdo escalated considerably in 1953 and 1954, beginning with ROK president Syngman Rhee��s establishment of the "Peace Line" or "Rhee Line" on January 18, 1952, in which South Korea placed a territorial boundary line that extended out into the East Sea/Sea of Japan to encompass Dokdo:  Much to the chagrin of the Japanese Foreign Ministry.   Over the next two years, Japanese patrol vessels would approach within close distance of the island and attempt to, and sometimes actually land on the island.   These patrols would provoke reactions from the Korean volunteer coast guards, who kept watch over Dokdo since being stationed there on April 20, 1953 and led by Korean War hero, Hong Soon-chil.   In an incident on June 27, 1953 crews of two Japanese coast guard vessels, led by Tomizo Sawa and Nobuo Igawa, drove six of the Korean coast guards from their base on the East Islet to the West Islet, landed on the island, and erected a Japanese territorial marker on the shore.   This action had little effect in Korea, since most of the government��s focus was on events concerning the end of the Korean War.   However, it was not forgotten by the president of Korea, when a year later, he sent a letter to North Kyongsang Province police chief Kim Jong-won, promising him a shipment of mortars and 100 rounds of mortar bombs for the Dokdo coast guards so that the weapons could be used to "scare off" intruding Japanese ships.   When issuing the orders, however, the provincial police chief changed the wording of the president��s orders from allowing the coast guards to "scare off" Japanese ships, to allowing them to "sink" Japanese ships.   ;

On July 12, 1953, three Japanese patrol boats (two of which were named the ��Hekura-ho�� and ��Oki-ho��) arrived to stage their typical show of force.   Upon arriving at Dokdo, the Japanese ships came under mortar fire from the Korean forces on Dokdo.   The ships returned fire, but the Japanese lost one boat and suffered 16 casualties, including a number of deaths.   Yet another such incident occurred on August 24, 1954.

The Japanese Foreign Ministry angrily denounced the Korean "illegal actions" in a letter to Seoul on November 30th.   The Japanese demanded an official apology from the ROK and the removal of the Korean coast guard from the island.   The Koreans did not give in.   It was at this time that Japanese right-wing groups discussed plans to assemble an armed reaction force in an effort to "free Takeshima" from the Koreans.   In the end, this incident only really served to heighten the animosities felt by either side and undoubtedly slowed down rapprochement between Korea and Japan.

In 1954, the Koreans had also built a concrete lighthouse and building, and a helicopter landing pad on the East Islet The islets have remained under the protection of Korean maritime guards ever since.

Despite these setbacks for their claim, Japan has officially declared several times since 1949 that Dokdo is a part of Japan, with South Korea protesting against this territorial claim time after time.

Dokdo in the 1965 R.O.K./Japan Basic Relations Treaty

Korean Foreign Minister Lee Dong-won (left) and the Japanese Foreign Minister, Etsusaburo Shiina reviewing ROK troops at Kimpo Airport upon Shiina��s arrival in Korea to negotiate the 1965 Normalisation Treaty between the ROK and Japan.

The dispute over Dokdo hindered the normalization of diplomatic relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea (R.O.K.) from the end of the Pacific War in 1945, to June 1965 when the Basic Relations Treaty was signed between Japan and the R.O.K.  As with the 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty, sovereignty over Dokdo was deliberately left out of the eventual text of the treaty upon request of the Korean side.   Nevertheless, Dokdo was discussed in conversations between ROK Foreign Minister Lee Dong-won and Japanese Foreign Minister Etsusaburo Shiina.   The normalisation of relations with Japan was not popular among the Korean public, who demanded a definite territorial boundary between Korea and Japan (known as the ��peace line��, or ��Rhee line��), war reparations from Japan, and ownership of Dokdo on Korea's side of the peace line.   Therefore, even the treaty of 1965 did not resolve the ownership of Dokdo between the two nations.

  The American position regarding Dokdo (although it might have been different in the past) is essentially one of "non-recognition" of both Korea��s and Japan��s claims to sovereignty over the islets.  The U.S. has taken this stance since it maintains defense pacts with both the Republic of Korea and Japan.  In the Japanese case, the U.S. takes into account the fact that the Japanese do not control the islands, thus placing them outside the territory governed by the Japan-U.S. Mutual Security Treaty.  In regard to Korea��s claim, it is unlikely that the U.S. would recognize Korea��s claim to the island based on the known history of the dispute. As such, the Mutual Defense Treaty between the U.S. and the ROK would also appear to be inapplicable since the treaty commits the U.S. to defend only that territory recognized by the U.S. as belonging to Seoul.

Recent Conflicts

This conflict between Japan and Korea is not just about the ownership of the two islets.  Both countries consider the ownership of Dokdo as an anchor for their respective interests in the surrounding waters.  At stake are claims to about 16,600 square nautical miles of sea and seabed, including areas that may hold some 600 million tons of gas hydrate (natural gas condensed into semisolid form).   This gas hydrate is believed to be deposited along the broad seabed extending from Dokdo to Guryongpo, North Kyongsang Province. Gas hydrate is a next-generation energy source that could be made into liquid natural gas if adequate technology is made available.   The island is surrounded by fertile fishing grounds, and both sides frequently attempt to bolster their claims to it.  Also spurring the fishing competition is a fear of dwindling sea resources.   Japanese fishing officials say the depletion of fish stocks in other parts of the world means their country must rely more on waters closer to home.  The northwestern Pacific in general has more underused fish stocks than other areas, according to the U.N.

Today, few marine areas in East Asia remain unclaimed-and many claims overlap.  The global Law of the Sea Convention, which entered into force in November 1994 after more than 20 years of negotiation, embodies most international law and state practice relating to the oceans.  Under the treaty, every nation with a seacoast is entitled to exercise jurisdiction over resources and certain activities in waters extending as much as 200 nautical miles from a coastal baseline-an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).  The problems here lie in the details, and this is nowhere better illustrated than in the Law of the Sea Convention, in which the extent and degree of jurisdiction a nation exercises is determined by a host of arcane factors, including the drawing of baselines, distance from the coast, and the meaning of "continental shelf," "equidistant lines," and the like.

According to the convention, a nation can claim sovereign rights over resources and all related activities, as well as jurisdiction over artificial structures, scientific research, and protection and preservation of the marine environment, within its 200-nautical-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).  But because tiny islets that are only flyspecks on a map may be used as a basis to claim an Exclusive Economic Zone, many maritime disputes focus on the ownership of tiny islands, reefs, and other "features" such as Dokdo, the Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea, and the Spratly/Xisha Islands in the South China Sea.   Unfortunately, the convention offers little specific guidance for the settlement of boundary disputes. Thus nations may still feel a need to engage in provocative military posturing, and the possibility of military conflict remains.

The 1996 dispute over Dokdo only further stressed the already fragile relations between South Korea and Japan.  Nonetheless, ways have been found to deal with boundary uncertainty.  Under a joint-development approach, these countries agree on the extent of the area in dispute, set aside the actual boundary question, and reach agreement on joint exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbons.  This strategy is supported by the Law of the Sea Convention, which stipulates that, pending agreement on the delineation of the continental shelf or the boundaries of Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), states should try to enter into provisional arrangements.  Perhaps the strongest reason for a state to opt for a joint undertaking is to protect its interests in potential oil or gas deposits, combined with a desire to maintain good relations with the other state.  Joint development is an idea that may look increasingly attractive as the need for oil intensifies.  Japan and South Korea have taken such an approach, and have established 230-mile EEZs under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.   After years of negotiation, the two countries signed the treaty in July 1996, setting quotas and regulations in each other's zones.

Continuing Anger

NEW UPDATES ON DOKDO:

LINKS:

Korean Coast Guards and their Sapsaree guard dogs keep a watchful eye over Dokdo.

This research compiled by Mark S. Lovmo