KBS reports:

Swimmer Cho Oh-yuen embarks on new Dokdo project  

(September 10, 2008)

 UPI Asia:
Japan alarmed by China’s military buildup

By HIROYUKI KOSHOJI
UPI Correspondent

TOKYO, Japan — Japan’s Defense Ministry, in its annual white paper released last Friday, expressed alarm over China’s fast-paced military modernization, pointing out for the first time that the country had stepped into militarizing space and had boosted its cyber warfare ability.

The report, endorsed by the Japanese Cabinet, is a clear indication of Japan’s displeasure with China’s military build-up and cites new reasons for the rise in China’s defense spending. The reason for China to modernize its military capabilities is to prevent any aggression from Taiwan including any support for its independence by foreign troops, the report said.

Early this year, China announced its defense budget of US$58.8 billion for 2008, which is 17.6 percent higher compared to the previous year. It is the 20th consecutive double-digit increase in defense spending, surpassing Japan’s defense budget of $44.3 billion for 2008. However, a Pentagon study on China’s military buildup estimates China’s real military spending to be two to three times higher than its official report because it does not include the development costs for new weapons or purchases of advanced weapons from foreign countries.

Japan’s latest defense report says that China has deployed new DF-31A intercontinental ballistic missiles, which have a range of 6,200 miles and is developing new Ju Lang-2 or JL-2 submarine-launched ballistic missiles. To load JL-2, it is now constructing a nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine. “If China puts JL-2 to practical use in addition to the already deployed DF-31A, its strategic nuclear force will be considerably upgraded,” the report said.

Besides, the report also mentions China developing new anti-ship ballistic missiles based on the DF-21 intermediate-range ballistic missile, which has already been deployed. China also possesses more than a hundred H-6 nuclear-capable medium-range bombers, it warned.

The report also mentions China’s growing military capabilities in space. “It has also been pointed out that China is developing an instrument that uses lasers to hamper the functions of satellites,” it said.

However, Japanese military analysts have pointed some drawbacks in China’s growing military arsenal such as lack of high-tech global positioning system guided missiles, precision-guided bombs, stealth weapons, Aegis destroyers, surveillance drones and high-resolution intelligent satellites.

According to the report, to close the gap on other military superpowers such as the United States, believed to have the world’s strongest military troops, China is enhancing its cyber warfare ability by experimenting on a host of computer viruses and other Internet technologies designed to freeze enemy command structures. “China appears to possess interest in the cyber warfare as they seem to be currently organizing and training a special cyber warfare unit,” it warned.

The report highlights China’s growing military threat by revealing events in 2007 when China took aggressive and threatening positions by piloting aircrafts near the Japan-China median line. Some H-6 medium-range bombers flew into the Japanese air defense identification zone over the East China Sea in September last year, when negotiations between both countries remained deadlocked over issues related to natural gas fields in the East China Sea. Disagreement prevails between the two countries on the sea boundary, which divides their territories in the gas-rich zone.

Regarding North Korea, the report emphasized that nuclear weapons were still a threat, as that country had not showed any intent to completely abandon its arsenal of nuclear weapons despite international pressure, especially from the United States. “It is difficult to eliminate the possibility that North Korea, in a relatively short time, has realized the downsizing of nuclear weapons and deployment of nuclear warheads,” it said.

Territorial disputes over islands between Japan and South Korea known as Takeshima in Japan and Dokdo in South Korea also made it to Japan’s annual military report. Despite its close and friendly ties with South Korea the report defended Japan’s rights to the islands. “Japan also confronts unresolved territorial disputes over the Northern Territories and Takeshima, both of which are integral parts of Japanese territory,” it said.

September 08, 2008

Korea Times:

S. Korea Mulls Cutting Military Ties With Japan

By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter

Seoul has stationed a 50-strong police contingent on Dokdo since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War to reinforce its ownership.

Korea Times:

Fukuda’s Exit Complicates Korea-Japan Ties

By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s sudden resignation Monday is expected to have implications on the relations between Seoul and Tokyo, which have reached their lowest ebb over history and Dokdo in the East Sea, local experts said Tuesday.

Some are worried that relations could turn sourer amid reports that Taro Aso, a former foreign minister known as being more conservative than Fukuda, will take over the post, while others are taking a wait-and-see approach as Japan’s political situation unfolds.

Professor Ha Jong-moon of Hanshin University in Gyeonggi Province described Aso’s possible inauguration as “the worst-case scenario” for ties between South Korea and Japan.

“Aso is well known for speaking about his opinions on historical and other political issues in a straightforward manner, so I believe bilateral relations would become worse,” Ha said.

Aso, who currently serves as secretary general of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), has made controversial remarks in the past.

In January 2006, for example, he called for the emperor to visit the Yasukuni shrine which houses not only the remains of Japan’s war dead, but also criminals responsible for atrocities during World War II.

He later backtracked on the comment but said he hoped such a visit would be possible in the future.

South Korea, China and other Asian victims of Japan’s colonization view the shrine as a symbol of Japan’s unrepentant militarism.

Jin Chang-soo, a senior researcher of the state-funded Sejong Institute, however, expected the opposite.

He said Aso, who has a strong support base within the LDP, would likely manage state and foreign affairs in a more stable manner than his predecessors if elected as leader. That support means he would not feel the need to push for provocative policies to gain political and public kudos, he said.

The main reason for Fukuda’s resignation was his dwindling public support. He had been struggling to cope with a divided parliament where the opposition parties controlled the upper house and could block his agenda.

“Personal political inclination cannot be a matter of concern,” Jin said. “Aso’s strong political support base could rather benefit future bilateral relations.”

Aso’s friendly relations with the United States could also cement ties with the Lee Myung-bak administration that has put a high priority on the alliance with Washington, foreign ministry officials said.

Cheong Wa Dae refrained from commenting on Fukuda’s surprise announcement to step down.

Officials at the presidential office, however, said Japan’s political situation would likely affect the scheduled tripartite talks between the leaders of South Korea, Japan and China later this month.

“We expect the Japanese government to determine its stance on the summit soon. We will also determine our government’s position later,” presidential spokesman Lee Dong-kwan said.

Tokyo earlier proposed the summit be held in Japan’s western port city of Kobe Sept. 21. But Seoul has delayed its decision on whether to participate in the meeting amid lingering public fury over Japan’s repeated claims to Dokdo, a cluster of South Korean-controlled islets.

In July, the Japanese government released an education guideline for middle schools referring to Dokdo as its own territory, dashing hopes of the Lee administration, which wanted to develop relations with Japan in a “future-oriented” manner instead of being caught up in disputes.

On Monday, Tokyo also revealed its defense white paper for this year in which Dokdo is described as its territory. It is the fourth time in a row that Japan’s annual defense white paper has referred to Dokdo as its own.

The paper noted that issues of Japanese territory ― the Kuril Islands and Takeshima, the Japanese name for Dokdo ― remain unresolved, according to diplomatic sources.

Located roughly halfway between South Korea and Japan in the East Sea, the rocky islets have been at the center of a decade-old row between the two neighboring countries.

The islets were annexed by Japan along with the Korean Peninsula in 1910, but Tokyo claims its territorial rights to the islets were declared five years before the start of Japanese colonial rule between 1910 and 1945.

Seoul has stationed a 50-strong police contingent on Dokdo since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War to reinforce its ownership.

(September 02, 2008)

New York Times:
Desolate Dots in the Sea Stir Deep Emotions as South Korea Resists a Japanese Claim

DOKDO, South Korea — Each day, weather permitting, hundreds of South Koreans sail to this cluster of nearly uninhabitable islets and outcroppings, seven seasick hours from the Korean mainland.

The waves are so unpredictable that only a little more than half of the visitors can land. When they do, it is for a 20-minute stay to snap photos from a wharf, the largest flat surface on this 46-acre collection of two main islets and dozens of other specks of land.

The rest of the visitors must content themselves with circling on the ferry, waving South Korean flags and throwing cookie crumbs at the sea gulls flying overhead.

Still, over the past three years, the voyage to these islets, which South Korea administers but Japan claims, has become a popular pilgrimage for Koreans. This year, 80,000 people have set foot here, undeterred by the lack of a souvenir shop, restaurant or public toilet.

“When Japan claims Dokdo as its own territory, we Koreans feel as outraged as if someone pointed at our wife and claimed that she is his own,” said Cho Whan-bok, secretary general of the Northeast Asian History Foundation, a government-affiliated institute established in 2006 to examine territorial and other disputes with neighboring countries.

For outsiders, the dispute over islets that seem to rise vertically from the sea and have little economic value might seem esoteric. But for those Koreans who have never forgiven Japan for its brutal occupation of their country and who continue to measure success against Japanese competitors, the dispute over what the South Koreans call Dokdo and Japan calls Takeshima is very real, and very emotional.

Both countries trace their claim back over centuries. Japan says it reconfirmed its right to Takeshima in 1905, during its war with Russia. For Koreans, however, that was an annexation that marked the prelude to Japan’s colonial rule, from 1910 to 1945, a period during which they were banned from using their language and many women were lured or forced into sexual slavery in front-line brothels for Japan’s Imperial Army.

The postwar peace treaty between a defeated Japan and the Allied powers did not resolve sovereignty over the islets, and since the 1950s, South Korea has maintained a police garrison here. Japan repeatedly urged South Korea to take the issue to the International Court of Justice, and South Korea repeatedly declined, arguing that there was nothing to discuss.

Then, in 2005, members of the prefectural assembly in Shimane, on Japan’s western coast, declared Feb. 22 — the 100th anniversary of the day the Japanese took over the islets — to be Takeshima Day, to highlight the Japanese claim.

Their resolution set off a firestorm in South Korea.

“If the Japanese try to take this island from us, we will fight to the end,” said Kwak Young-hwan, captain of the 5,000-ton Sambong, the South Korean Coast Guard’s largest patrol boat, which prowls the waters around Dokdo. “If we run out of firepower, we will ram our ship against the intruders! Our national pride is at stake.”

The dispute heated up again this year, with the two countries engaging in a tit-for-tat struggle that, at one point, dragged in the United States — an ally of both nations.

In July, the Japanese Ministry of Education issued a new manual for teachers and textbook publishers urging them to instruct Japanese students that the islets rightfully belong to Japan.

South Korea responded by recalling its ambassador to Tokyo for three weeks. South Korean citizens chimed in, with a small group of protesters decapitating pheasants — Japan’s national bird — in front of the Japanese Embassy in central Seoul. The administrators of the Seoul subway system removed a Japanese company’s condom advertisements.

Even North Korea, still technically at war with the South, criticized Japan. Rodong Sinmun, North Korea’s main state-run newspaper, said that Japan’s new educational manual on Dokdo was “a militarist racket for territorial expansion” and that it could “ignite a war around the Korean Peninsula.”

In July, in the midst of the uproar, the United States Board on Geographic Names changed the island’s status from “South Korean” to “undesignated sovereignty,” outraging South Koreans, many of whom saw it as yet another instance of their nation’s fate being arbitrarily decided by a bigger power.

The board insisted that its decision was just technical. But the Bush administration intervened, ordering the board to restore the old designation. The move was well received in Seoul. When President Bush visited this month, after years of tension between the United States and South Korea over North Korean policy, tens of thousands of residents greeted him waving American flags and placards that read “Welcome President Bush!”

Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Nobutaka Machimura, later said, “There is no need for us to overreact to a decision made by just one organization in the United States.”

South Korea’s offensive in the battle for world opinion featured a press trip last week that included a reporter for The New York Times. The government sponsored the voyage, aboard a Coast Guard ship, for journalists working for foreign news organizations.

Among the post-World War II generations of Koreans, a desire to surpass Japan — and fear that they could once again be subjugated by a larger neighbor — remains a powerful driving force.

Mr. Cho of the Northeast Asian History Foundation said, “Even in sports, such as Olympic baseball, South Koreans get twice as happy when they beat Japan as when they defeat, say, the United States.”

In this charged atmosphere, Dokdo, which means “solitary island,” is more than a collection of rocks. South Koreans like to personify it as if it were a sibling or a spouse. A popular modern version of “Arirang,” the song Koreans most associate with their national spirit, begins: “Dokdo, did you sleep well last night?”

“I feel lonely and isolated serving here,” said Kim Eun-taek, 24, a police conscript stationed on Dokdo. “But I feel immensely proud. Not every South Korean gets a chance to guard the easternmost territory of our nation.”

“Besides,” he said, a rifle on his shoulder as he gazed across the sea toward Japan, “I never liked the Japanese.”

Dokdo is not an easy posting. Until a South Korean company recently donated desalinization equipment, the islets had no reliable water supply. There are almost no trees, and winter weather cuts off ferry service for weeks at a stretch.

Although regional security experts say South Korea and Japan have too much at stake to use military means to settle their differences here, the South Korean Coast Guard says that the number of Japanese patrol boats sailing around the islets has increased since the sovereignty issue resurfaced in 2005.

Kim Sung-do, 68, an octopus fisherman, and his wife have lived here for 40 years as Dokdo’s only year-round civilian residents. He said he did not expect the Japanese to invade.

But “if they ever do that,” Mr. Kim said, “I will fight them, even if the only weapons I have are my bare fists.”

In front of his concrete home, at the foot of a bluff, seven South Korean flags whipped in the wind.

August 30, 2008

 Reuters reports:

S.Korea steps up defense of disputed islets

By Marie-France Han

ABOARD THE SAMBONG COAST GUARD SHIP (Reuters) – On a South Korean coast guard patrol ship chugging towards desolate islands at the centre of a bitter territorial row with Japan, academics and officials vow to repel any Japanese claim to the lonely outcrops.

Over the past few weeks, the South Korean president, politicians, actors and even companies making mobile phones and fizzy beverages have delivered the same patriotic message for Japan to keep its hands off the remote islands.

South Korea and Japan both claim historical rights to the cluster of rocks, which the Koreans call Dokdo (“solitary island”) and the Japanese call Takeshima (“bamboo island”).

“Our mission is to prevent anyone from claiming that Dokdo is not Korean territory,” said Kim Hyun-soo, head of the newly created Dokdo Research Institute.

“We are striving to offer scientific, incontrovertible proof that Dokdo is Korean,” the international law expert said, while declining to discuss the size of the institute’s budget or staff, saying any details could be used by outside interests to track its activities.

The dispute over the islands is deeply emotional for Koreans, who say the islands were the first pieces of their territory seized by Japan when it started its 1910-1945 colonial reign over the peninsula.

Japan has insisted the islands were never a part of Korea to begin with, so they were not returned when Tokyo relinquished its claims to the peninsula following its defeat in World War Two.

The long-simmering dispute erupted again in July after an official school history teaching guide in Japan referred to the islands as Japanese territory, triggering angry demonstrations in Seoul and an official protest from South Korea.

South Korea responded by forming the research institute, sending ships to fortify Dokdo’s defenses and saying it would build even more structures on the islands that it controls.

Representatives of the Dokdo Research Institute took foreign correspondents to the islands, which are situated about the same distance from the mainlands of South Korea and Japan.

Once on Dokdo, reporters were free to speak with police officers and military conscripts in charge of defending the territory.

“When I look at Dokdo, I am filled with pride at the idea that I am working for the country,” said Kim Yang-soo, the police officer in charge of the 30-odd men stationed on the island.

Reporters were also treated to the sight of Kim Sung-do, who along with his wife is the only civilian living permanently on the island with the financial help of the local administration.

The weathered, 68-year-old fisherman and Vietnam War veteran, often featured on national media, smoothly delivered a few choice words against Japan.

“Instead of being apologetic, Japan is becoming more and more brazen,” Kim said. “This worries me. It has to stop.”

Yet even officer Kim acknowledged that no Japanese ship had come anywhere near the grey, rocky outcrops in recent memory.

Emotions aside, possession of the islands could bring enormous benefits.

The cluster, which comprises of two main rocks and dozens of “insular features,” lies in fertile fishing grounds and may sit above potentially enormous deposits of natural gas hydrate.

According to the government-funded Northeast Asian History Foundation, academic studies have shown the gas hydrate reserves could meet South Korea’s natural gas needs for 30 years, for a value of almost $15 billion.

Analysts said previous South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun used to fan the flames of anti-Japanese sentiment to build political support. Since the dispute flared up, successor replacement Lee Myung-bak has seen his support rate recover from a nose-dive during his first few months in office.

On a sunny summer afternoon earlier this week, two photographers who had made the journey from the mainland and had received special permission to shoot the largely unspoiled islands were waiting for a ferry out.

“The island is much bigger than we had expected. It’s beautiful,” said one man, who gave only his surname, Lee.

“It’s a strong symbol, but I just wonder if Koreans have to always be shown portraying Dokdo as a fight to the death,” Lee said. “This is just a beautiful place.”

(Editing by Jonathan Hopfner and Megan Goldin)

August 31, 2008

Tuscon Citizen:

Denogean: Tucsonan is a rock in protest over islets

Puts spotlight on coveted acres between South Korea, Japan

ANNE T. DENOGEAN
A heated international dispute over a tiny pair of islands has prompted the return of a Tucson resident to his homeland of South Korea to stage a one-man, monthlong protest against Japan.

 Chosun Ilbo:

 Netizens Fund Dokdo Ad in Washington Post

A full-page advertisement pointing out that the Dokdo Islets are Korean territory appeared in the Monday issue of Washington Post, funded by thousands of Korean Internet users. Internet portal site Daum said money raised from some 110,000 Internet users paid for the ad, which was placed by Korean publicist Seo Kyoung-duk, who last month put a similar ad in the New York Times with sponsorship from singer Kim Jang-hoon.

After seeing the ad in the Times, an Internet user on July 10 proposed a fundraising campaign on Daum. It drew some 110,000 Internet users until Monday and raised W180 million (US$1=W1,079). Netizens also decided what to put in the ads, and then a PR company volunteered to make three samples. Netizens voted on the samples from Aug. 4 to 12. The winner was titled “Stop distorting history” and got 58.6 percent of the votes.

August 26, 2008

 Korea Times:
Projects Unveiled to Reinforce Sovereignty Over Dokdo

By Na Jeong-ju
Staff Reporter

It has already launched the state-funded Dokdo Research Institute that will take charge of research and studies on the islets.

(August 21, 2008)

Korea Times:

 American Urges US to Recognize S. Korean Sovereignty Over Dokdo

An American elementary school teacher said Sunday that the United States should designate the Dokdo islets as South Korean territory.

August 18, 2008