New Delhi: The waters in the East and South of China are hotting up with countries sliding into standoff over islands totally inhabited, but pregnant with hot commodities like minerals and hydrocarbons.
After China going all out to dismiss the claims of Japan over Diaoyu islands, or Senkaku islands as the Japanese call them, South Korea has now launched a massive information exercise to dispute the Japanese claims over Dokdo islands.
South Korea Embassy here is distributing among the media a book titled ‘Dokdo-Korea’s Beautiful Island’. According to reports, its missions have distributed lakhs of copies of this booklet across the world.
The booklet has four chapters explaining the Korean government’s basic position on the sovereignty over the island, an account of historical records and overview of the dispute with Japan and ‘restoration of sovereignty’ after the Second World War.
A covering letter from the Embassy said,” The Republic of Korea exercises irrefutable territorial sovereignty over Dokdo and holds the position that no territorial dispute exists regarding the island, it being part of its territory since time immemorial and Japan’s assertion of claim over the territory is not only lawful and groundless but shocking and futile.” The diplomatic tension between the two countries shot up after South Korean President Lee Myung-bak visited Dokdo on August 10.
He said Japan’s attitude towards Korea showed that it was still unrepentant over its 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
The 33-page English-language booklet distributed by the Korean Embassy here says, “In the Cairo Declaration regarding Japan’s unconditional surrender and Korea’s independence, announced in December 1943, it is stated that ‘Japan will also be expelled from all other territories which she has taken by violence and greed.” Japan was last week again the target, this time by China, for its claim to sovereignty over inhabitated islands in East China sea, which China calls Diaoyu islands, but which the Japanese have named as Senkaku islands.
China warned Japan of adverse consequences. Though the dispute regarding territorial sovereignty on the islands had been simmering for long, it flared into a serious standoff last week when the Japanese government announced that it had purchased the landmass from a private Japanese owner.
However, Japan has refuted the Chinese claim, saying that these islands were not the subject of any dispute at all.
China is also engaged in dispute over islands with other nations in the South China Sea. These are Spratly Islands, Paracel Islands, The Pratas Islands, The Macclesfield Bank, and the Scarborough Shoal.
