竹島問題の歴史

17.6.15

Congressman Ed Royce of California makes fool of himself with "Dokdo" comment.

U.S. Congressman Edward Royce (CA)
According to a May 19 Yonhap News article entitled "Royce reiterates Dokdo is Korean territory," U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Edward Royce, while rejecting Japan's claims to Liancourt Rocks, supposedly made the following comment to a conference of Korean Americans at the Congress:

"This has been the case throughout history. The only time that I've ever seen it show up differently on the map was after Japan occupied Korea ... then Japan claimed South Korea -- all of Korea and claimed Dokdo island."

How could "Dokdo" show up differently on a map when it had never showed up on any maps prior to the Japanese annexation of Korea? And Liancourt Rocks never appeared on any Korean map by any name prior to Japan's annexation of Korea.

On July 19, 1951, after reading the request by the Korean Ambassador in Washington that Dokdo and Parangdo be added as Korean territory to the Japan Treaty, John Foster Dulles asked the location of the islands. The Korean Ambassador said he believed they were in the general vicinity of Ullungdo. When Dulles asked if they had been Korean territory before the Japanese annexation, the Korean Ambassador said, "Yes," after which Dulles said that if that were the case, there would no problem adding the two islands. The following paragraph is the recorded description of the relevant part of the meeting:
Mr. Dulles noted that paragraph 1 of the Korean Ambassador's communication made no reference to the Island of Tsushima and the Korean Ambassador agreed that this had been omitted. Mr. Dulles then inquired as to the location of the two islands, Dokdo and Parangdo, Mr. Ha stated that these were two small islands lying in the Sea of Japan, he believed in the general vicinity of Ullungdo. Mr. Dulles asked whether these islands had been Korean before the Japanese annexation, to which the Ambassador replied in the affirmative. If that were the case, Mr. Dulles saw no particular problem in including these islands in the pertinent part of the treaty which related t the renunciation of Japanese territorial claims to Korean territory.
As you can see in the above passage, Mr. Dulles was ready and willing to give Dokdo and Parangdo to Korea if Korea could only tell him where they were located and prove that they had been Korean territory before the Japanese annexation. Unfortunately for Korea, the Koreans could do neither; they could only say they thought the islands were near either Uleungdo or "Takeshima Rock," which means they did not know that Dokdo was supposed to be Liancourt Rocks or that Parangdo was actually in the East China Sea. In fact, according to THIS KOREAN ARTICLE, the Koreans did not find the submerged Parangdo rocks until 1973, about 150 kilometers southwest of Korea's Jeju Island. And it was a submerged reef, not an island, as Koreans had claimed. If Dokdo had really been Korean territory, one would think they would have known where it was.

In an August 7, 1951 telegram to the U.S. Ambassador to Korea, John J. Muccio, Mr. Dulles wrote the following:
Neither our geographers nor Korean Embassy have been able to locate Dokdo or Parangdo Islands. Therefore unless we hear immediately cannot consider this Korean proposal to confirm their sovereignty over these islands.
Then just three days later on August 10, 1951, Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk wrote the following to the Korean ambassador:
As regards the island of Dokdo, otherwise known as Takeshima or Liancourt Rocks, this normally uninhabited rock formation was according to our information never treated as part of Korea and, since about 1905, has been under the jurisdiction of the Oki Islands Branch Office of Shimane Prefecture of Japan. The island does not appear ever before to have been claimed by Korea. It is understood that the Korean Government's request that "Parangdo" be included among the islands named in the treaty as having been renounced by Japan has been withdrawn.
As you can see, after the Americans finally found out that Korea was claiming Liancourt Rocks as Korean territory, it did not take them any time at all to decide that the Korean claim on the Rocks was as ridiculous as their claim on Japan's island of Tsushima had been, and Mr. Rusk politely told them so. Apparently, the U.S. had already done its homework and confirmed that Liancourt Rocks was Japanese territory. The fact that the Korean ambassador and the Korean embassy staff did not know the location of "Dokdo," even while knowing about "Takeshima Rock" (Liancourt Rocks), probably sealed the deal in favor of Japan.

Finally, in a "Top Secret" report of his mission to the Far East in 1954, General James Alward Van Fleet, Special Ambassador for U.S. President Eisenhower, wrote the following:
4. Ownership of Dokto Island 
The Island of Dokto (otherwise called Liancourt and Take Shima) is in the Sea of Japan approximately midway between Korea and Honshu (131.80E, 36.20N). This Island is, in fact, only a group of barren, uninhabited rocks. When the Treaty of Peace with Japan was being drafted, the Republic of Korea asserted its claims to Dokto but the United States concluded that they remained under Japanese sovereignty and the Island was not included among the Islands that Japan released from its ownership under the Peace Treaty. The Republic of Korea has been confidentially informed of the United States position regarding the islands but our position has not been made public. Though the United States considers that the islands are Japanese territory, we have declined to interfere in the dispute. Our position has been that the dispute might properly be referred to the International Court of Justice and this suggestion has been informally conveyed to the Republic of Korea.
Congressman Royce needs to stop pandering to the large Korean population in his district (Northern Orange County) and start showing some moral backbone. Rather than making a ridiculously false statement just to get votes, he should have simply said that the matter of "Dokdo" was something that Japan and Korea needed to work out between themselves.


Foreign Relations of the United States, 1951, Volume VI


7 Aug 1951 Telegram to Muccio from Dulles

10 Aug 1951 Letter from Dean Rusk to Korean Ambassador
Excerpt from the Van Fleet Mission Report submitted to President Eisenhower on 4 Oct 1954

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous17/6/15 17:17

    One who trusts Korean Dokdo claim backs away from the truth.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Whoa easy there Gerry. Take a deep breath.

    I think Congressman Royce may have been referring to Dokdo never appearing on Japanese maps until after they annexed the islands during the Russo-Japanese War.

    Why can't Japan find open public support for their Takeshima lobby movement? (outside of CH2 that is)

    Still, I don't see what those 60 year old confidential memorandums have to do with anything.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Gerry, I wrote something about this article.

    http://blog.naver.com/isoword/220556237534

    The dispute is not easy to understand, so anybody can fool himself. I think Van Fleet did, too. From time to time, we don't know that we don't know it. Secretary Rumseld's unknown unknown.

    ReplyDelete

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