Dokdo issue should be resolved by Seoul, Tokyo: Harold Koh

The chief legal adviser of the U.S. State Department, Harold Hongju Koh, said Friday that the issue of Dokdo should be resolved by South Korea and Japan.

Koh, a prominent Korean-American expert on international law, came to Seoul to attend the Judicial Symposium in Korea 2012 hosted by the Supreme Court.

"Clearly, this is an issue that Japan and (South) Korea need to work out between the two countries," Koh said during an interview held on the sidelines of the symposium.

Japan's claims to the country's easternmost islets of Dokdo have long been a source of diplomatic friction in relations with South Korea, as resentment over Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of Korea still runs deep here.

"This has been a very emotional issue for many years," the 58-year-old former Yale Law School dean said. "We are very confident that they will be able to cooperate and resolve this problem."

Koh, a leading expert on international law, national security law and human rights in the United States, took his post in 2009 after a request from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

His father, Koh Kwang-lim, was serving as a Korean diplomat in the U.S. when a military coup overthrew the fledgling democracy here in 1961. Koh's family never returned home.

"My late father, Koh Kwang-lim, was a friend of (Korea's late) President Kim Dae-jung. So it was a very touching moment (to attend his funeral in 2009)," Koh said.

Koh received his law degree from Harvard University and was appointed dean of Yale Law School in 2003. He served as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor under U.S. President Bill Clinton from 1998 until 2001.(Yonhap)

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