Japan-South Korea Territorial Dispute

Remember the territorial dispute between Japan and South Korea which erupted in a phenomenal way in 2005?

It started on March 16 when Japan's Shimane Prefecture passed an ordinance to designate February 22 as Takeshima Day. This added fuel to fire to the long-simmering controversy over the ownership of islets known to Japan as Takeshima, and to the Koreans as Dokdo. Koreans were infuriated with the ordinance, which was passed in the symbolic year of 2005 - the centennial of the Japan-Korea Protectorate Treaty of 1905. Many Koreans felt that the Japanese government had tacitly approved the move, and was further evidence of efforts to justify Japan's colonial rule of Korea from 1910 to 1945.

Writing in Japan Echo (August 2005), Osaka University professor Park Il noted that he could not think of any Korean president who had been as fiercely critical of Japan as Korean president Roh Moo-hyun, particuarly in the weeks surrounding the controversy.

"The only possibility I can think of is Syngman Rhee, the nation's first president, who in the 1950s pursued a foreign policy of a harshly anti-Japanese nature."

Regarding the ordinance, the Japanese government had offered the excuse that ordinances were matters for local government bodies to decide on, and that the central government must not interfere in local matters.

Refuting this argument, Park noted that Tokyo certainly did not sit silently by when Governor Hashimoto Daijiro of Kochi Prefecture proposed an ordinance in 1999 to prevent nuclear-armed vessels from calling on the Port of Kochi. Instead, Tokyo protested loudly, saying that Kochi was intruding upon the central government's right to conduct diplomacy, and the bill was eventually rejected.

Park also took the Japanese government to task for not having intervened earlier.

Apparently, the 1999 fisheries agreement between Japan and Korea put the question of territorial boundaries on hold. It stipulated that the waters in the vicinity of Takeshima was not part of the exclusive economic zone of either country, but fall instead in a neutral zone to be jointly managed by Tokyo and Seoul.

At that point, as Park pointed out, it should still have been possible for either country's boats to fish freely in the area. But Korea then strengthened its hold on the islets using military personnel stationed there permanently, and Japanese fishing boats have since been prevented from approaching the islets and fishing around them. Fishing being a major industry in Shimane, local fisheries petitioned authorities in Tokyo several times for help in gaining access to the fertile seas around Takashima, but each time they were advised not to stir up trouble.

"If the Japanese government, upon hearing the complaints of these fishers, had entered into talks with the Korean government to seek a solution, and if the talks had fruitful results, the prefecture assembly might never have bothered to designate a Takeshima Day."