Using books to fight a territorial conflict
May 21, 2008
Mr. Jung’s phone is calling all the time. “It’s going to be a busy day today,” he says. He is a journalist at Korea Times, specially covering the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The Japanese ambassador is called by the foreign minister of Korea. Recently, Japanese media have reported that a group of islands that Korea sees as their is going to be mentioned in Japanese school books for middle school social studies classes as Japanese territory.
The group of islands that is called Dokdo in Korean, Takeshima in Japanese, and Liancourt Rocks in English, is situated in the sea between Korea and Japan. The sea is called East Sea from Korean point of view and Sea of Japan from the Japanese side. The dispute over the islets can be traced back to pre-modern times.
In 1905, when Japan occupied Korea, they also occupied the islands. After the Second World War there was an instruction telling that the islands should be given back to Korea, but in the final Peace Treaty of San Francisco, they were not mentioned.
The islands are still a hot topic. And an emotional topic.
Some weeks ago, I had coffee with some students at Konkuk University in Seoul. They were discussing a lot of political issues, and after a while, they asked me: “What do you think about Dokdo?” At the time, I had no clue what Dokdo was.
The student explained that the group of islands have always belonged to Korea, but Japan is trying to get hold of the islands because the want the sea to fish in. And that the people living on the islands are Korean. Simple calculation: The islands should belong to Korea.
When googling on the islands, I read that the islands are uninhabited, except for a small Korean police detachment, administrative personnel and lighthouse staff.
Just after the news about Japanese text books, the Korea Dokdo Reasearch Center, which is a governmental institute, has been telling media that they are composing a report in English titled “Was Dokdo really Japanese Territory?” They are also planning to translate 14 essays that are arguing that Dokdo is Korean territory into English and publish them in a book in October.
The text books and the publications in English in Korea are just few in a long line of material on the islands. The examples are many. In Japan, there are brochure released by the Japanese foreign minister. In Matsue, a “Takeshima Day” is celebrated once a year. In Korea, there is a project on promoting the islands trough media corporations like National Geographic, letting them show the history, geography and natural resources.
Seoul. May 21, 2008
