North East Asia: Territorial Disputes and Divided Countries

‘North East Asia: Territorial Disputes and Divided Countries’ was the second in this year’s seminar series, ‘Changing World Views: International Challenges for the UK and Japan’.

The Chair, Dr Jim Hoare, freelance writer and broadcaster and formerly British Chargé d’Affaires and Consul General in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), introduced the first speaker, Professor Reinhard Drifte, Emeritus Professor of Japanese Politics at Newcastle University.

Summary

Drifte introduced the three territorial conflicts he would examine – the delimitation of the maritime border between Japan, China and Korea in the East China Sea; the sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands (Diaoyu Islands in Chinese) between Japan and China and the dispute over Economic Exclusion Zone (EEZ) claims by China and Korea over Suyan (in Chinese) / Ieodo (in Korean).

Drifte remarked on the topicality of the seminar: rumours had it that Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao had in the last few days asked Prime Minister Aso to cancel his trip to China due to the issue of territorial disputes, US navy vessels and Chinese vessels had recently confronted each other in the South China Seas and the Philippine Parliament had just passed a law reasserting Manila’s claims to disputed islands in the South China Sea.

In referring to the main points driving the Japan-China disputes, Drifte gave a potted history. The Senkaku Islands were incorporated into Japan in 1895, just before the end of the Sino-Japanese War, and China made a late claim to them in 1970. The barren islands, it has been shown, are rich in oil. Bringing the audience up to date, Drifte said that last year, after four years of consultations, Japan and China concluded the 18 June agreement on cooperation in the East China Sea. Though an important breakthrough, it will, nevertheless, take further negotiations and political will to conclude a treaty.

Drifte pointed out that the Korean dimension cannot be ignored, and remarked that no East China Sea delimitations exist between Japan and South Korea or between South Korea and China. The 1974 Japan-South Korea treaty was ratified in 1978 resulting in Chinese protests; and Japan has accepted South Korea’s ‘extended continental shelf’ approach though it doesn’t adopt this position in its disputes with China. Drifte did suggest that perhaps Japan and South Korea could agree that the ‘rocks’ (Takeshima in Japanese, Dokdo in Korean) are Korean, which would allow Japan a bigger fishing zone.

The China-Korea issue over the submerged Suyan/Ieodo centres on China’s 200 nautical mile EEZ- claim and the claim made by Korea in 1951. In 2000 China and South Korea agreed that it is indeed a rock not an island. This conflict continues to centre over EEZ issues, but is no longer concerned with issues of sovereignty.

Drifte concluded by saying that these territorial conflicts can be enlightening in terms of revealing patterns of behaviour.

The next speaker, Dr Heonik Kwon, Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, chose to look at the issue of Takeshima/Dokdo, which lies in the East Sea (Sea of Japan), from a Cold War perspective and began by talking about the significance of 2005 in Japan-Korean relations.

Kwon pointed out that 2005 had been the 60th anniversary of Korean independence from Japanese rule, the 40th anniversary of the restoration of Japan-South Korean ties and the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the period of ‘national shame’ – referring to Japanese colonial rule over Korea. Though this dates from 1910, Kwon said it had evolved from the Japanese annexation of Dokdo, for military purposes, in 1905. Though 2005 was supposed to be a year of friendship between the two countries, good will soured when Shimane Prefecture, into which administrative field Takeshima falls, announced a ‘Takeshima Day’.

Kwon referred to the academic Bruce Cumings’ idea of ‘parallax vision’ which he defined as the apparent change in the appearance of a subject due to change in the position of the viewer, almost like an optical illusion. Kwon said that large-scale human tragedies may arise from such mere optical problems.

He went on to say that the status of Takeshima/Dokdo was left ambiguous in the San Francisco Treaty of 1951 contravening the Potsdam and Cairo Declarations which refer to Japanese unlawful annexation of Takeshima/Dokdo. The emergence of the Cold War, ventured Kwon, resulted in the American treatment of Japan shifting from punitive to generous as Japan was given a central role in containing the spread of communism. Korea, Britain and New Zealand voiced their concern. By the time of the San Francisco Treaty, Korea was embroiled in the Korean War, and Japan had become an American ally.

In the same way that 1905 saw the start of Japan’s gloomy imperial adventure, said Kwon, the promise of 1951, which had the potential of culminating in the international will to mark the end of Japanese rule and launching a new era, was marred by the militancy of the Cold War.

Kwon finished his talk by positing that Japan has to learn about its neighbours and vice-versa. Echoing Drifte’s sentiments, Kwon said that mutual recognition of the other is key.

The questions, comments and answers following the presentations were wide-spanning and included discussions on the meaning of arbitration and adjudication and their efficacy in solving territorial disputes, the auspiciousness of 60 year cycles in both Japanese and Korean culture (derived from the Chinese), ways of resolving the territorial conflicts covered, the relevance of international courts in solving disputes, Japanese and Chinese cooperation off the coast of Somalia and in northern China and what we can learn regarding the behaviour of countries from their conduct in dealing with territorial disputes.

Dr Hoare gave the vote of thanks concluding that the speakers, in very different ways, had given the audience a lot to think about and had attracted very interesting questions. Though the issues discussed are yet to be solved, Hoare was gratified that light had been shed on these important matters.

Professor Drifte Presentation

About the contributors