A group of former South Korean elite soldiers slaughtered live pheasants, Japan’s national bird, outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul last Thursday (July 17) in protest against Japan’s sovereignty claim on Liancourt Rocks. Video below…
The Liancourt Rocks are a group of small islets in waters between Japan and Korea; the islets are also known as Dokdo in Korean or Takeshima in Japanese. Both nations are claiming sovereignty over the islands… and the dispute heated up recently following Japan’s fresh claim of ownership in their textbook guidelines.
The South Koreans protested heavily as expected, and I don’t blame them for doing so. However, cruelly slaughtering live birds in public? That’s too much.
Most foreigners don’t have enough knowledge on who actually owns the island. We can only learn a bit of the story from news and websites; and this kind of bird-killing gimmick certainly won’t go well in global opinions… it achieved nothing besides showing the world a bad image of South Koreans.
its ugly, the koreans are hammering the birds to death, it makes the koreans look very very bad. i hope other koreans are not approving this action, its so sick no matter what reasons it is for.
So, who actually owns the islands??? Is there no real claim other than the Korean claim against the Japanese claim. Is there no official historical documentation to be found at all that can be referred to?
Maybe they could split ownership…though with the bad feelings between the two that kind of compromise is highly unlikely.
Anon#2… I have no answer for that; from what I have read so far, both sides have their own references and documentations which could be interpreted in different ways.
The problem is both sides have issued some documentations, and the Japan side claims that there’s no other way than to entrust them to the international court, but the Korea side refuses it. They insist “the islet clearly belongs to Korea, so the trial is unnacessary”, and set their troops to keep Japan’s fishing boats away (around the islet is a rich fishing ground).
Koreans keep saying it’s one of the Japanese imperial government’s plots, but it’s totally wrong…Japaneses knew the islet long way before and drew it on a map. I cannot make impartial judgments because I’m Japanese, but the reason why Korea refuses trials and resort to power seems clear: they know they cannot win. They tend to believe “the louder voice can change the world” as you can see on the movie.
For your reference please see below URL. (It’s a blog of an Australian. Please skip occasional racial quarrels and see the framework of the discussion.)
http://www.occidentalism.org/
Thanks for the note Joseph. This kind of issues are always controversial, and to be frank putting it to international court might not be the best idea…
The int’l judges probably won’t know the real history and facts, and often judge based on the quality of proofs which are directly affected by the quality of lawyers and administration staff of the respective countries instead.
My country Malaysia has previously involved in two land dispute cases which were handled by the international court in Hague; we won one and lost the other. Irony thing is, from my point of view… we didn’t deserve to win the one we won, but deserved to win the one we lost instead.
If I am the leader I would suggest a share ownership; but this idea doesn’t seem possible in international diplomacy though.
Thanks for your reply and information Yein.
I agree. To share ownership would be an ideal solution. The second best would be both sides to through the ownership away. But I can’t imagine Koreans accept either of the proposals. If the current Korean president would do so, he would be assassinated very soon, to be honest. What I cannot understand at all is their claim which says “There’s no controversy. It’s a pure plot of the evil Japaneses”. There IS controversy and there has been NO plot about the islet.
I feel very sad that in the two nations, China and Korea, they still teach children “Japan is an evil country”, although Japan has payed for those countries depressed during the war, issued official apologies, maintained a peace society for half a century. Because they know the effect of the education, they also protest against description on Japan’s history textbooks. As a natural result, in Japan there has been more and more haters of the above two neighbors, especially among the younger generation. In my opinion the judgment has to be made by a third party, before the public emotion here comes to the limit of patience and right winged politicians get more power.