Here is the latest from the Dokdo front:
Rosy prospects of enhanced three-way cooperation between South Korea, Japan and the United States against North Korea’s growing threats face uncertainty as a long-running territorial dispute once again pits Seoul and Tokyo against each other.
Korea Times
Japan’s claim to Dokdo, South Korea’s easternmost islets, and other historical issues regarding its wartime atrocities, continue to overshadow their bilateral ties, dashing Washington’s hopes for trilateral cooperation.
South Korea’s new president and the U.S. leader, who visited Asia recently, have tried to change these dynamics, as evidenced by last week’s unprecedented joint statement by their foreign ministers condemning Pyongyang’s ballistic missile launches.
The Japanese foreign ministry lodged a protest against South Korea’s marine survey around Dokdo for the second straight day, Sunday and Monday.
According to Japanese media reports, the ministry confirmed that a Korean research vessel had thrown something like a wire into the sea in Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone and that South Korea had acknowledged the marine survey.
However, South Korea’s foreign ministry rejected the claim, saying that it was unacceptable. The ministry also said that the survey was a legitimate activity in accordance with domestic and international laws.
You can read more at the link.
Here is the latest on the Dokdo front:
South Korea strongly protested the inclusion of a map indicating South Korea’s easternmost islets of Dokdo as Japanese territory in Tokyo’s newly created defense white paper for children, the foreign ministry said Monday.
Lee Sang-ryeol, the director-general for Asia Pacific affairs, and Kim Yong-gil, minister at the South Korean Embassy in Tokyo, lodged a protest to Naoki Kumagai, deputy chief of mission at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, and Taisuke Mibae, deputy director-general of the Japanese foreign ministry’s Asian and Oceanian affairs, respectively.
“They said that in light of our position that Dokdo is our inherent territory historically, geographically and by international law, (the map) can never be accepted, and they urged Japan to immediately delete the document,” the ministry said in a text message to reporters.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
Here is the latest map that is being claimed to show Dokdo as Korean territory:
Spain has shown President Moon Jae-in an old map that describes Dokdo as part of the territory of Korea, according to Cheong Wa Dae, Wednesday (local time).
The map showing came amid Japan’s renewed territorial claim over Dokdo, Korea’s easternmost islets, on its website for the Tokyo Olympics.
According to presidential spokeswoman Park Kyung-mee, Moon visited the Spanish senate library after delivering a speech at the senate.The library officials showed Moon the map, titled “Royaume de Coree” (Kingdom of Korea), which was made by French geographer and cartographer Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville (1697-1782), in 1737 when the territory was known as the Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910).
Korea Times
You can read more at the link, but I doubt this map depicts Dokdo. Just looking at the map the islands are not even geographically where they should be and according to the article the island that is supposedly Dokdo was not even spelled right. When you think about it why would a Spanish cartographer include Dokdo on this map back then as Korean territory when they would have just been worthless rocks? The only thing that makes Dokdo valuable today is the territorial waters that it brings with it in modern times which did not exist back then.
The ROK military will continue their Dokdo defense drill against the invasion that is never coming:
South Korea plans to stage an annual military exercise on and around its easternmost islets of Dokdo this week to beef up the country’s defense capabilities, sources said Monday.
Korea Times
The drill, named the East Sea Territory Protection Exercise, is scheduled to take place Tuesday, and will involve the Navy, the Air Force and the Coast Guard, according to the government and military sources.
The Marine Corps will not join this year’s program, as no landing drill will take place, the sources said, adding that it will be staged in a way that minimizes in-person contact given the COVID-19 situation.
You can read more at the link.
This would have been the stupidest reason ever to boycott the Olympics:
South Korea is not considering boycotting the Tokyo Olympics, the foreign ministry said Tuesday, after presidential hopefuls of the ruling Democratic Party mentioned the possibility of a boycott amid a renewed territorial spat with Japan over the East Sea islets of Dokdo.
Korea Times
Rep. Lee Nak-yon and former Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun raised the need to mull boycotting the Games, slated to take place from July 23-Aug. 8, should Japan not revise the map of the Olympic torch relay route that included Dokdo as its territory.
You can read more at the link.
It is the summer protest season which means the Dokdo crazies are showing up again:
South Korean university students burned a Japanese flag in Seoul for the second consecutive day on Wednesday in protest of the Tokyo government’s claim to South Korea’s easternmost islets of Dokdo.
Members of the Korean Progressive University Student Union set the Rising Sun Flag, formerly used by the Japanese imperial army, on fire in front of Dongnimmun (independence) Gate in central Seoul in the afternoon after condemning the Japanese government and Tokyo Olympics organizers for claiming Dokdo.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
Could it be that in 1904 neither Korea or Japan cared about Dokdo because there was no exclusive economic zones back then thus making it a worthless pile of rocks unlike now?:
A Japanese elementary school textbook published about a century ago did not define the easternmost Korean islets of Dokdo as Japanese territory, a Seoul-based public foundation said Wednesday.
The state-funded Northeast Asian History Foundation disclosed the old Japanese geography textbook printed in 1904 at a seminar of history experts in Seoul, slamming Tokyo for its latest approval of school textbooks renewing territorial claims to Dokdo.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
