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  In addition, in March 1977, the Soviet Union’s 200-nautical mile zone led to the enactment of new territorial sea laws between Korea and Japan. When Japan implemented the 12-nautical mile territorial sea and 200-nautical mile fishing zone law from July 1977, it set only the 12-nautical mile territorial sea around Dokdo and did not apply it to the 200-nautical mile fishing zone. In response, Japanese fishermen and related organizations organized the ‘200-Nautical Mile Promotion Campaign Headquarters’ and developed a campaign to demand the establishment of a 200-nautical mile zone and the fisheries administration to guarantee fishing rights.

  As such, the Korean government’s offshore policy to exclude Japanese fishing boats from the vicinity of Dokdo began in earnest as the fishing area expanded from the coastal waters of Korea to the waters around Japan due to the modernization of fishing technology and the enlargement of fishing boats. As a result, Shimane Prefecture began raising the issue of territorial sovereignty again in order to secure fishing rights around Dokdo.

  Since the enactment of the Takeshima Day ordinance, the General Affairs Division of Shimane Prefecture has established the Takeshima Issue Research Group to conduct research to discover historical materials and develop logic to prove that Dokdo is Japanese territory. Citing a report published by the Takeshima Issue Research Group, Shimane prefectural fishery-related pressure groups adopt the logic of asserting that Dokdo is Japanese territory and protest to the Japanese government as a political act. The protest as a political act expressed by Shimane Prefecture distorts Japan’s “non-residential preoccupation theory” and “inherent territory theory” of Dokdo and becomes a logical background for claiming that Korea is illegally occupying Dokdo. As such, Japan’s Dokdo-related policies are leading to “politicization of disputes,” bringing the territorial dispute to the surface by combining Shimane Prefecture’s populism and the logic of local politics.

  Here, the politicization of disputes refers to a phenomenon in which conflicts or confrontations between Korea and Japan combine with real politics to secure important interests directly related to maritime sovereignty and the existence and prosperity of maritime territories. This politicization of disputes is closely related to the opportunity for Shimane Prefecture to establish the so-called Takeshima Day.

  First of all, securing fishing rights between Korea and Japan over the waters around Dokdo, from the entry into force of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in 1994 to the conclusion of the New Korea-Japan Fisheries Agreement in 1998, that has become a territorial issue provides a clue to why Shimane Prefecture enacted the so-called Takeshima Day ordinance. The Korea-Japan fishery regime was transformed from the 1965 Korea-Japan Fisheries Agreement to the 1998 New Korea-Japan Fisheries Agreement based on changes in international maritime order and changes in the norms of fishery recognition. Interestingly, Shimane Prefecture is approaching the Dokdo policy from a value theory rather than an emotional approach, focusing on the issue of fishing rights directly related to the local economy.

  Furthermore, Japan ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in June 1996 and implemented a resource management system. In 2001, with the enactment of the Framework Act on Fisheries, Japan introduced the total allowable effort(TAE) system for sustainable use of fishery resources, which should be noted that measures have been put in place for fishing. This total allowable catch(TAC) system protects depleted fish species and aims at sustainable fisheries, so it was able to prevent overfishing of fish species resources by setting certain standards. However, since the amount of catches was determined according to the quota amount for local governments and fishermen, the total production amount was inevitably reduced, and as a result, the need to secure new fishing grounds was raised. Above all, Shimane Prefecture paid attention to the Japanese government’s negotiating method on how to handle the “territorial dispute over Dokdo” and how to negotiate the fisheries agreement and the EEZ issue.

  Finally, at the same time as the New Korea-Japan Fisheries Agreement was concluded in 1998, interest groups related to local fisheries strongly raised Shimane Prefecture’s territorial claim to Dokdo. In particular, it cannot be denied that the activities of JF Shimane and Prefectural Citizens’ Association, which have a deep interest in the fishing industry in Shimane Prefecture, had an impact on Shimane Prefecture’s policy establishment related to Dokdo. With the conclusion of the New Korea-Japan Fisheries Agreement in 1998, when the catch of Shimane Prefecture began to decline sharply, JF Shimane and the Prefectural Citizens’ Association began to organize their activities. The activities of JF Shimane and the Prefectural Citizens’ Association have turned from Shimane Prefecture’s Dokdo-related policies, which have begun to attract public attention in Japan, to the enactment of the so-called Takeshima Day ordinance. They have become a driving force for territorial conflicts to spread as a phenomenon of “politicization of disputes.”