Tokyo must withdraw unjust sanctions on flag carrier

Japan’s virtual ban on government officials’ flying with Korean Air goes against common sense in more than a few ways.

A territorial dispute is an inter-governmental issue. We have seldom heard a government tackling it through retaliatory steps against foreign private firms, as Tokyo is doing now.

Also, the foreign ministries are normally responsible for settling problems caused by private sectors or other government agencies through diplomatic means. The Japanese diplomats are taking the lead in aggravating bilateral relationship in most undiplomatic ways.

It is not hard to see why Tokyo resorts to this unprecedentedly poor diplomacy to express its displeasure with the flag carrier’s demonstrative flight of its new A380 Airbus to the Dokdo islets a month ago. The approval rating of Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan has hit rock bottom, due to the enormous earthquake at home and what hawks see as his weakness in handling territorial disputes abroad.

Admittedly, Tokyo seems to have racked its brains to maximize the protest’s effect while minimizing actual friction, by limiting the period of flight restraint to one month. This makes it hard for Seoul to bring it to the World Trade Organization for violating of government procurement accord, as the sum involved is unlikely to reach the criterion of $200,000.

To be short, the damage will be more symbolic than substantive.

Neither the Japanese leader’s political plight nor Tokyo’s careful calculation should be excuses for Seoul to respond meekly, however. Foreigners might wonder what all the fuss is about over a couple of tiny volcanic outcroppings. One important reason may be fisheries and mineral resources, including the reportedly huge reservoir of methane hydrate in the East Sea, or Sea of Japan as the Japanese call it, an energy source that could last Koreans 30 years.

There are far more important reasons than economic ones, though. For Korea, Dokdo is a matter of principle (in territory) and identity (in history). It was in 1905 that Japan first claimed what it calls Takeshima as its territory, when Korea couldn’t afford to care about a few islets as the entire country’s fate hung by a thread. Japan says Korea had never claimed it as its own. Retroactively thinking, what would be the point of asserting ownership for what the Koreans had taken for granted for more than a millennium?

All this was nothing but Japan’s preemptive bid by making the most of its superior military strength and better knowledge of international laws in the early 20th century. Japan’s claims over the Senkaku Islands in the south and the Kuril Islands in the north were made in the same way.

Dokdo was the start of the Japanese annexation of the Korean Peninsula five years prior to full colonization. By claiming Dokdo, Japan is trying to restore its territory in colonial days. For Korea to accept Japan’s claims, on the other hand, is to justify the neighboring country’s brutal colonial rule for 35 years.

Seoul must make Tokyo realize, both by logic and action, any further irrational insistence on Dokdo would end up isolating it further in Northeast Asia.