Korea is unique in its ability to – as a friend of mine here put it the other day – make you want to root for the other guy, even when it seems that Korea is actually in the right for once.
Case in point – Have you heard of Dokdo? Or Takeshima? If so, you’ll know that they’re both the same place, and the name you use depends on where you’re from, or maybe simply on whether you prefer Japanese (Takeshima) or Korean (Dokdo) food. I’m not going to get into details, but suffice it to say this is a land-dispute between Korea and Japan that has been on-going since Japan annexed the peninsula in 1905, over an island so small that one of the other names it goes by is the Liancourt “Rocks”. Korea, still flaming pissed over having been occupied by Japan for the first half of the 20th century, has made Japan-bashing a national pastime - so when it comes to Dokdo, winning the dispute with the Japanese is a matter of national pride.
Anger over the issue dies down periodically, but every once in a while Japan does something to bring it back to the forefront, either by driving a coast guard ship a little too close to the rocks for Korean comfort, or by denoting the island as officially Japanese in school textbooks, as they recently did. Wexford insisted that I pin some of the blame for the continuous nature of this dispute on the Japanese, for obnoxious yet subtle actions such as these. And when it comes down to it, it does seem as though Dokdo truly is Korean territory. But the vehemence with which Koreans insist Dokdo is theirs, the disgusting actions they resort to in protest of Japanese claims, and the in-your-face nationalism that emerges in support this meaningless pile of rocks, makes me want nothing more than to see it officially recognized as Japanese.
A friend of mine in Washington DC described to me how Korean lobbyists are gaining a name for themselves as enormously unsophisticated, so intent on pushing the “Dokdo is Korean” cause that US Congressmen and women are forced to remind them that there are more pressing issues to deal with – for example, their unruly neighbor up North. The Kims whine about it so much that on his recent trip to Seoul President Bush was obliged to rename the Rocks Dokdo in official US documents so the that air would be clear to calm them down over one of the other irrational obsessions here – American beef.
Part of the reason I’m so incensed with this stupid affair stems from my own recent run-in with the issue. I had been scheduled to speak at a “world” conference in Japan this month, organized by a consortium of Korean universities and think tanks, and held in a different country every year, where speakers discuss various issues surrounding Korea. Unfortunately, this was right around the time Japan started bragging again that Takeshima was a Japanese territory. A few weeks later I got an email from the organizers informing me the conference would no longer be held in Japan, but would be moved to Korea - all because the bitchy Korean academics were upset about their precious rocks. It’s like a couple of kids on the playground fighting over marbles, except all the kids have PhDs and still believe in fan-death.
The most despicable reaction, however, came a couple weeks ago, when a group of Koreans staged a protest outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul by decapitating pheasants, the Japanese national bird. It was a small group of bird murderers, but the overwhelming feeling of anger demonstrated at the protest permeates the entire country and is emblematic of how seriously folks around here take a bunch of useless rocks.
Korea may be right, Dokdo might really be Korean territory, and Japan may just be rubbing salt in a decades-old wound. But until I can have a conversation about international relations in this country without someone bringing up Dokdo, until I can watch the news without seeing some nationalist head-case beating an innocent creature to death, and until Korean citizens start paying as much attention to their starving and persecuted brethren up North as they do to this insignificant group of rocks seven hours off the cost of the peninsula, I’m with Japan on this one.
