Category: Dokdo Madness

I think the Korean left actually enjoys the fact that Shimane prefecture has had an annual Takeshima Day since 2005 just so they have an excuse to vent their anti-Japanese sentiment:

South Korea lodged a strong protest Saturday against Japan’s renewed claims to South Korea’s easternmost islets of Dokdo.

Seoul’s foreign ministry called in Hirohisa Soma, a senior official at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, and expressed regret over Japan’s annual event meant to publicize its territorial claim to Dokdo.

“We again sternly urged Japan to immediately repeal” its event on Dokdo, the ministry said in a statement.

The protest came hours after the Japanese prefecture of Shimane held the Takeshima Day event and a senior Japanese government official attended the ceremony. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but Koreans should just ignore this stupidity from a backwater Japanese prefecture, but it is too much red meat for the Korean left wing base to ignore especially before April’s parliamentary elections.

I do have to give the Korean left credit because they have at least toned down their annual response to Takeshima Day. I can remember the good old days of the Great Dokdo War.  I can still remember the hard days when those of us in Korea had to stock up on food and supplies to survive the initial declaration of war from President Roh Moo-hyun.  We made it through multiple cease fires, close calls, and even the failure of the Daemado campaign.  

Times had been so desperate there was even talk about recruiting North Korea to fight off the evil Japanese Imperialists.  Though the casualties on the Korean side have been heavy at times, through it all the brave defenders of Dokdo have continued thwart the massive Japanese armada descending on the islet.  

We were also treated back then to such Korean patriots like Flag Eater Man, Chung Dong-young, the Finger Chopping Lady, the Knife in the Gut Man, Weed Killer Man, the Dokdo Riders, and most importantly that great general of all things Dokdo, Bee-Man.  Sorry Korean Democratic Party, you have nothing on these great defenders of Dokdo.

This is an unfortunate accident:

 Rescue workers found three bodies believed to be among the seven missing people aboard a crashed chopper near the Dokdo islets in the East Sea on Saturday.

A helicopter belonging to the fire agency crashed Thursday night, a few minutes after it took off from Dokdo, with seven people on board, including an injured person from a fishing boat.

Rescue workers found three bodies and retrieved one of them as part of an underwater mission by a submarine rescue ship of South Korea’s Navy.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I am surprised someone hadn’t thought of doing this sooner:

The National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage (NRICH) introduced LiDAR, a new technology which made a debut scrutinizing the Dokdo islets last week, in commemoration of Dokdo Day, which falls on Oct. 25. The day marks King Gojong’s official proclamation of Dokdo as territory attached to Ulleung Island in 1900.

LiDAR, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging, is a technology using lasers to illuminate and measure the reflected light to estimate the distance to a target. This uses s distant red light to 3D scan the terrain. 

The drone has become a popular means of cultural heritage management and preservation as it can reach places that people cannot to acquire photo and video data. A drone equipped with LiDAR can provide more meticulous information on the topography and ecology.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

The Bank of Korea is considering issuing Dokdo coins:

The chief of the nation’s central bank has pledged to consider issuing “Dokdo commemorative coins,” amid increasing public demand for the issuance of such coins in a pre-emptive move to increase awareness among the international community that the eastern islets are Korean territory.

Bank of Korea (BOK) Governor Lee Ju-yeol made the promise during a National Assembly audit of the bank, Tuesday, in response to Rep. Park Myung-jae of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party, who asked whether the issuance of Dokdo commemorative coins is still difficult for the central bank.

In a report given to Rep. Kim Du-kwan of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) ahead of the audit, the BOK also said: “If the government asks us to issue Dokdo commemorative coins, we will consider the issuance, after taking its appropriateness and ripple effects into account.”

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

I would love to know what the context is in regards to these maps that were found on these government websites. This sounds like more stirring of the pot to get anti-Japanese issues back in the headlines:

This Japanese lawmaker is an outcast within Japanese politics because he has made past statements about going to war with Russia over the Kuril Islands which Russia has occupied since the end of World War II. However, stupid comments like this are a gift to the anti-Japan leftists in South Korea:

Japanese lawmaker Hodaka Maruyama caused a sensation on social media after he recommended Saturday to go to war to claim the Dokdo islets as Japan’s.

“Takeshima, the territory unique to Japan, is occupied by illegal occupants,” he wrote on his Twitter account on Saturday, using the Japanese name for the islets. “How do you get it back by means other than eliminating illegal occupiers by dispatching the Self-Defense Forces in various contingencies?” 

Maruyama wrote the post after a group of Korean lawmakers visited the islets on Saturday. Six lawmakers, including three from the ruling Democratic Party, visited Dokdo and criticized the Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games for marking the islets as Japanese territory on its website. 

Korea effectively controls Dokdo, an islet in the East Sea also referred to as Liancourt Rocks, and maintains that there is no territorial dispute as it is Korean territory, historically, geographically and under international law. Japan also claims Dokdo as its territory.

“Look to this lawmaker Maruyama,” wrote a Korean user on Twitter on Sunday. “He thinks that Japan can claim Dokdo by going to war. Remember what it was like back in 1592 – they said there will be no war between Korea and Japan, yet there was. We have to be prepared for war now.”

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but I always find it amazing how the news media uses random Twitter messages as some kind of justification of what public sentiment is on issues.

#ROK governing party members visit #Dokdo 8/31 & declaim: "The Abe gov't has weaponized economics & declared war on us…We will prevail over Japan's economic provocation with the spirit of independence." #Patriotism #Propaganda #Agitationhttps://t.co/oIFVEyP0SO

— Sung-Yoon Lee (@SungYoonLee1) August 31, 2019

But how else is the Moon administration going to draw attention away from their latest corruption scandal if they don’t play the Dokdo card?:

South Korea’s military drills on its easternmost islets of Dokdo were “not productive” in the country’s current row with Japan, the U.S. State Department said Tuesday.

The comment comes a day after South Korea concluded a two-day exercise on and around Dokdo, drawing protests from Japan, which lays claims to the islets.

In a statement, a department spokesperson said Washington does not take a position in the territorial dispute but regards the drills as unhelpful in light of the two countries’ ongoing dispute over trade and wartime forced labor.

“The question of the sovereignty of these islands is for the ROK and Japan to resolve peacefully,” the spokesperson said on condition of anonymity, referring to South Korea by its official name, the Republic of Korea.

“Given the recent disagreements between the ROK and Japan, the timing, messaging, and increased scale of military drills at Liancourt Rocks are not productive toward resolving ongoing issues,” the spokesperson continued, using the Franco-English name for the rocky outcroppings in the East Sea.

“We encourage the ROK and Japan to have committed, sincere discussions on resolving these disputes,” added the spokesperson.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Really. The Japanese right is like the rapist who keeps finding ways to torment his victim years after, because it makes him feel powerful just knowing he can. JPN’s nonsensical and constantly evolving Dokdo claims are an attempt to “bitch slap” Korea for jollies.

— the oranckay (@oranckay) August 25, 2019

I would love just once to have someone in the media ask who the foreign infiltrators are that are threatening to invade Dokdo:

The South Korean armed forces launched a two-day military exercise to defend the easternmost islets of Dokdo on Sunday amid growing tensions over trade and their shared history, in a show of its staunch defense stance against Japan’s repeated claims to sovereignty over the cluster of rocks in the East Sea.

The Navy announced that the drill involves Navy, Air Force and Army forces, such as naval warships and aircraft, as well as Army and Marine Corp troops.

“Indeed, it’s an exercise to guard our sovereignty and territory,” Cheong Wa Dae spokesperson Ko Min-jung said at a press briefing.

She added that it’s a regular training and asked media not to attach excessive “political” meaning to it.

The drills have been held twice a year, usually in June and December, to better fend off possible foreign infiltrations to the rocky outcroppings and the surrounding waters.

Yonhap

The closest thing to a “foreign infiltration” that has happened on Dokdo was back in 2006 the Japanese said they were going to have a ship full of scientists conduct an underwater survey of the ocean in the vicinity of Dokdo which they never ended up doing.

Meanwhile in recent months you have China claiming Korean territory and flying bombers over it and the Russians have actively violated Korean airspace over Dokdo with their war planes and there was never a rush to conduct a military exercise in response.