Newsletter

Q

This year (2013) marks the 70th anniversary of the Cairo Declaration. What is the historical significance of the Cairo Declaration?

A

The year 1943 was a time when the Allies were trying to achieve cooperation among the powers in order to put an end to the war and discuss post-war settlements. At that time, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, recognizing the need for an international organization to keep international peace and security, held a meeting of their foreign ministers in Moscow where they adopted a joint declaration. It was also a time when they raised the need to establish a new global, international organization that would replace the League of Nations. In particular, US President Franklin Roosevelt, in favor of establishing the international organization, thought that cooperation among the powers was necessary to keep peace and order.

Against this backdrop, from November 1943, the leaders of the three states Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin held the first summit of the Allies in Teheran, Iran. Roosevelt and Churchill stopped by Cairo en route to Teheran, met with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek of the Republic of China for discussion on war against Japan and announced the Cairo Declaration on November 27, 1943.

The Cairo Declaration is a historic declaration deeply relevant to the future of the Korean peninsula. First of all, it declared, "Japan shall be stripped of all islands she has seized or occupied in the Pacific since the beginning of World War I." It also declared that all the territories Japan had taken from China should be restored and that Korea should be liberated from the rule of Japan and become a free and independent state in due course. At that time, Roosevelt felt a need to be more aggressive in waging war against Japan by boosting the morale of Chiang Kai-shek and the people of China. In particular, he counted on China to be stabilizing force in post-war Asia, and made efforts to safeguard the interests of the U.S. in Asia by developing an amicable relationship between the U.S. and China..

And the Cairo Declaration made it clear that Japan would also be expelled from all other territories which she has taken by violence and greed since the Sino-Japanese War in 1895. Accordingly, Dokdo, which Japan seized by force from the Greater Empire of Korea, was also to be restored. These essences of the Cairo Declaration would carry on in Article 8 of the Potsdam Declaration, of which terms Japan would accept unconditionally when the Allies dropped nuclear bombs on Japan. In other words, Japan would legally accept both the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Declaration. It was expected that these international declarations would determine Japan's future. Finally, Article 8 of the Potsdam Declaration stated that "the terms of the Cairo Declaration shall be carried out and Japanese sovereignty shall be limited to the islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku and such minor islands as we (the Allies)　determine." Then here is a question. Is Dokdo included in the minor islands to be determined by the Allies as specified in the Potsdam Declaration?

Some argue that the Potsdam Declaration is nothing but a joint declaration by the four Allies with no legally binding force. The Cairo Declaration, with the terms calling for Japan's unconditional surrender and recession of its occupied territories after the war, was the promise of Korea's independence and restoration of Manchuria and Taiwan to China. In other words, as Japan declared its full acceptance of the Cairo Declaration through the Potsdam Declaration which stated that Japan should be expelled from all other territories which she had taken by violence and greed, it obviously implies that Japan should renounce Dokdo, which Japan took by violence and greed. After all, Dokdo is the island taken by Japan by violence and greed in February of 1905, and therefore had to be excluded from Japanese territory, to be restored to Korean territory.