Modest proposal for Dokdo
By Kyung Moon Hwang
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If you’re like me, you tend to roll your eyes whenever you hear about the latest feud over Dokdo, known as Takeshima in Japan. The most recent controversy arose after the Japanese government approved privately-published textbooks that refer to South Korea’s control over these rocks as an “illegal occupation.”
There was nothing new about any of this, but it was enough for the South Korean government to denounce the move publicly. This will change nothing, of course. South Korea will continue to possess these islets as its territory, the government and other groups in Japan will make their own counter-claims, and the usual emotions will boil on both sides, only to die down until the next round of verbal back-and-forth.
There is, in other words, a performative quality to this dispute, which has been raging for over six decades. Weary parties on both sides, from civic organizations to public officials, seem to be going through the motions in a tiresome ritual, like young adults dragging themselves home to participate in ancestral ceremonies during Chuseok.
Therefore I propose a first step in solving this recurring conflict in the spirit of reconciliation and relief: Stop talking about it. First must be the South Korean government, which has recently doubled down on propaganda efforts, from primary schools undertaking special Dokdo education programs to placards and pamphlets in train stations, airports, and even diplomatic compounds in foreign countries.
This needs to stop. Lawmakers, civic organizations, and private citizens can say what they want, but the South Korean government itself should modestly stay above the commotion, knowing that its control over Dokdo will never be endangered. The Japanese government would then follow suit.
This is unlikely to happen, of course, because the respective territorial claims are based not on practical considerations such as the negligible natural resources in Dokdo’s surrounding waters, but rather on good old fashioned tribalism, mixed surprisingly with the workings of democracy itself.
Even if cooler heads prevail in the two central governments, the hotter heads in legislatures, local governments, and civic organizations, as well as rabble-rousers, will always find a plentiful supply of supporters to incite. And in a democracy, these voices must be accounted for, regardless of how irrational they might appear.
In any case, the solution cannot be an authoritarian one, however tempting that seems. South Korean dictators in the past manipulated public sentiment over this dispute to save or strengthen their own legitimacy. This is the kind of ruling behavior that South Korea has thankfully moved past.
But South Koreans are still bound to the firm belief that Dokdo is somehow an absolute matter of patriotic pride, indeed of historical justice. Thus democracy in this case works to resist a more rational, realistic solution. Over in Japan, the bureaucrats probably want to avoid this issue as much as possible, but they must contend with agitated residents in Shimane Prefecture, spineless politicians, and loony right-wing groups, the same ones who go around in black trucks to intimidate voters during election campaigns.
Fortunately, neither Japan nor South Korea is currently under the autocratic grip of demagogues, rulers who in the past stoked nationalist passions to wage war. Indeed true democracies have almost never gone to war against each other, which might be the best justification, out of many, for democracy in the first place.
So while the messy realities of democracy prevent this problem from being suppressed, they more than compensate by preventing the same problem from escalating into some crazy explosion. Instead, we are left to pursue an imperfect solution with hopes that, over time, more citizens on both sides will come to realize that this not a straightforward matter.
Both sides have demonstrated, through careful presentation of historical evidence such as maritime logs, bureaucratic records, and maps, that these islands have long been charted and used by the forerunners to today’s respective national governments and peoples. Koreans point to the oldest such documentation, dating all the way back to the Silla era from over a millenium ago, but the Japanese contest the accuracy of such sources.
The Japanese, meanwhile, can show that the empire of Japan formally claimed sovereignty over these uninhabited islets in 1905, the same year Japan defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese War and thereby gained domination over Korea. This painful shared history, of course, explains Koreans’ emotional attachment to Dokdo as a symbol of historical rectification.
Indeed Japan’s disastrous imperial ventures in the early modern period lie at the heart of several territorial disputes with China, Russia, and others, and it is a problem without any foreseeable resolution. This does not mean, however, that Japan’s neighbors should constantly exploit this resentment, however understandable it is.
A way to break free from such a bind is to pursue forgiveness and reconciliation in full consideration of history’s complexities. For the Dokdo issue, the best way forward for the South Korean government, it seems, is to practice restraint in public expression.
Let the tourists continue to visit, especially from Japan, under tight controls, and make sure to halt Japanese provocations, such as approaching protest boats from Shimane. But first, please stop commenting on it.
I understand this is a long shot at best, especially since the trends now are moving in the opposite direction. But it is worth proposing, if only to encourage thinking beyond familiar terrain.
Kyung Moon Hwang is a professor in the Departments of History and East Asian Languages and Cultures, at the University of Southern California. He is the author of "A History of Korea — An Episodic Narrative"(Palgrave Macmillan, 2010; second edition, 2016).