Here we go with another example of South Korean politicians scoring cheap political points during the upcoming summit with Kim Jong-un at the expense of Japan:
Japan has protested South Korea’s move to put dessert with a decoration featuring Dokdo on the table for the dinner planned for the upcoming historic inter-Korean summit, a local media reported Wednesday.
According to Japan’s broadcaster NHK, Kenji Kanasugi, the Japanese foreign ministry’s director-general of Asian and Oceania affairs, protested the Seoul government’s decision in his meeting with a senior South Korean Embassy official in Tokyo.
He is also reported to have expressed regrets and called on the Seoul government to drop the food from the dinner menu.
On Tuesday, the presidential office of Cheong Wa Dae disclosed the details of the menu for the summit dinner that included the dessert capped with an edible map of a unified Korean Peninsula also showing the country’s eastern islets of Dokdo. [Yonhap]
You can read the rest at the link, but notice the South Koreans did not put Ieodo on to the map which they have a territorial dispute with China over.
Also the fact the Japanese government is protesting this is just as juvenile.
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.
Allegedly an English teacher was behaving badly in Cheongju:
Amid the spreading #MeToo movement, a native English-speaking teacher at a girls’ high school was recently fired over allegations of sexually molesting students and calling the East Sea the “Japan Sea.” It was the victimized students who told the school of his misbehavior.
According to Yonhap News, the instructor, who worked at the school in Cheongju, was booked without physical detention on suspicion of sexually molesting students. The school also terminated his contract.
The former instructor is from Western Europe and worked at the school for seven years.
The school became aware of his misbehavior in May last year and asked police to investigate.
The school confronted him with its findings and he admitted making unwanted physical contact with the students, and racial and sexually offensive remarks. [Korea Times]
Here is his most shocking crime:
He also allegedly told the students that Korea and Japan should share Korea’s easternmost islets of Dokdo rather than fighting over them.
He should be exiled to live out his life on Dokdo after making a statement like that! 😉
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)
We just couldn’t go an entire Olympics without some Dokdo nonsense:
Japan lodged a protest with South Korea after flags hoisted during an Olympic preparation match were found bearing disputed islets in the Sea of Japan, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Monday.
“We cannot accept the flag in light of Japan’s stance over the sovereignty of Takeshima and it is extremely regrettable,” Suga said at a news conference, referring to the South Korean-controlled, Japanese-claimed islands called Dokdo in Korean.
The sports flag appeared during a game between Sweden and the unified Korean women’s ice hockey team in Incheon ahead of the Pyeongchang Winter Games. [Japan Times]
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.
The Aegis destroyer “King Sejong the Great” patrols seas off South Korea’s easternmost islets of Dokdo on Jan. 1, 2015. (Yonhap)
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.
It figures that the Moon Jae-in administration would find a way to stick to the Japanese during President Trump’s visit:
U.S. President Donald Trump hugs sex slavery victim Lee Yong-soo at a state dinner at Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul on Tuesday. /Yonhap
The rightwing government in Tokyo was duly incensed when Korea served U.S. President Donald Trump shrimp caught near Korea’s easternmost islets of Dokdo, to which Japan maintains a flimsy colonial claim.
Worse in the eyes of the nationalists in Japan was the invitation to a state dinner for Trump on Tuesday of a victim of imperial Japan’s sexual enslavement of women during World War II.
Tokyo protested through diplomatic channels that Cheong Wa Dae’s invitation of sex slavery victim Lee Yong-soo to the state dinner is “against the purport” of a 2015 agreement to compensate the women, which was once described as “a final and irreversible resolution,” according to the Yomiuri Shimbun on Wednesday.
The controversial deal, which trades indirect compensation for a promise to remove memorials for the victims from the vicinity of Japanese diplomatic missions, makes no mention of what events the victims of the atrocity can or cannot be invited to.
The new government of President Moon Jae-in wants to reverse it. [Chosun Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but why were the victims of Chinese and North Korean atrocities not invited to the state dinner?
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?:
On the map of Asia from Okamura’s textbook compiled in 1886, a red line is drawn to mark Japan’s territory. Dokdo is not included on the map. / Yonhap
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]
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