Japan has denied wartime crimes and distorted historical facts, saying there are no official Japanese government documents backing them up. Tokyo also rejected records of other countries and even accounts of live victims under similar contexts, making it doubly difficult for its neighbors to seek compensation or set things right.
This is why we think it especially significant that two Koreans have recently discovered Japanese governmental documents tracing back to 1951, which show Tokyo officially excluded Dokdo islets from its territory on two occasions, by ordinances from the Prime Minister's Office and the Ministry of Finance, respectively. The ordinances, which were made to distinguish ``current'' Japanese islands from islands of ``colonial days," unequivocally kept Dokdo out along with Jeju and Ulleung islands. Unlike Korea, Japan does not specify own territory in its Constitution, so the two decrees can be said as having legal authority on territorial issues.
As a matter of fact, the international society clearly excluded the three Korean islands from the Japanese territory as early as in 1945, as shown by the Directive No. 677 issued by the allied forces' headquarters in Tokyo. Japan claimed the final text of San Francisco Treaty in 1952 omitted Dokdo's exclusion from Japanese territory, but most historians agree it was due to the lobbying by the Japanese government.
Will the latest finding decisively change the situation of territorial dispute between Korea and Japan toward Seoul's favor, then?
Hardly. It was only weeks ago the Japanese Foreign Ministry distributed pamphlets containing its territorial claims on the rocky outcroppings in 10 languages though its overseas missions, turning a deaf ear to Seoul's belated protests.
All this shows the Korean government needs to make more active and systematic efforts for both developing diplomatic logic and staging public relations activities abroad. In a hands-off policy called ``quiet diplomacy,'' Seoul has so far been caught off guard by Tokyo's repeated provocation and fussed about belatedly and emotionally.
Korea's only logic has been that Koreans discovered the islets earlier and lived there earlier, but the international community, especially people in Western countries have seen that a country's territory could change according to changing dynamics of international politics.
To know how unprepared Seoul is for an eventual territorial duel, one has only to visit major Web sites, in which Dokdo is spelled as diverse as ``Tok Island,'' ``Tok-do,'' and ``Dok Island,'' while its Japanese counterpart is one and the same, Takeshima. In the British Library site, there are only four academic theses on Tok Island against about 400 on Takeshima.
The government, instead of just welcoming private citizens' voluntary and strenuous efforts, should do what it can and try to find out more. It's all the more regrettable, considering the Dokdo islet issue instantly draws attention of almost all Koreans, while only a small group of the Japanese people show similar interests in it.
Global financial turmoil and other international situations have made a joint front among three Northeast Asian countries more important than ever. It is also desirable for governments to separate diplomatically sensitive issues from their overall cooperation. This does not mean, however, Seoul could put these problems on the back burner but rather requires more skillful and consistent diplomacy.
Next year marks the centenary of Korea's annexation to Japan.