독도 에세이 콘테스트 동상 수상

Mistakes from past, lessons for future

Anil Sebastian Pulickel Bronze Prize winner              aniltoch@gmail.com Anil Sebastian Pulickel is a student at the National Law School of India University in Bangalore. After completing his secondary school education in India, he was awarded a scholarship by the Singapore government to attend Junior College in Singapore.

In international politics, an opportunity to conclusively resolve an important territorial dispute is rare.

In the aftermath of World War II, the Allied powers were presented with such an opportunity to resolve the territorial dispute between South Korea and Japan over Dokdo.

It came in the form of the San Francisco Peace Treaty that was signed between Japan and an influential section of the Allied powers on Sept. 8, 1951.

However, while many other post-war territorial transfers were provided for in the treaty, what was surprisingly missing was an explicit reference to control over the territory of Dokdo.

As this essay will demonstrate, factors such as skewed historical research, the desire to speedily conclude international negotiations over the treaty, and geopolitical self-interest on the part of countries like the United States denied a lasting solution for the vexed Dokdo issue.

Given the final shape of the treaty, it may perhaps be surprising that for a significant period of time, it seemed like the drafters of the treaty were fully inclined to resolve the Dokdo issue.

According to the mandate that the Allied countries had given themselves through the Potsdam Proclamation in 1945, they had complete discretion to decide which of the minor islands might be detached from Japan after its surrender.

As a matter of fact, the San Francisco Peace Treaty, which was heavily influenced by the Potsdam Proclamation, initially saw an attempt to return Dokdo to South Korea.

Between March 19, 1947 and Nov.2, 1949, at least five drafts of the treaty recognized Dokdo as the rightful territory of South Korea, to be returned by Japan.

Then, suddenly and without any explicit explanation, the drafts (with the exception of the one dated Dec.19, 1949) stopped treating Dokdo as South Korean territory.

The final version of the treaty made no reference to Dokdo, leaving the situation ambiguous, and fertile for future controversy.

Clearly, at some point of time, there had been a conscious decision to omit Dokdo from the San Francisco Peace Treaty.

So what explains this dramatic reversal of the treaty drafters stance? An exploration of the issue throws up at least three major contributory factors that deserve examination.

First, during the drafting of the treaty, the Allied powers led by the United States, increasingly felt that it would be better for the treaty to be short and general in nature.

Thus, the inclusion of an exhaustive list of territories to be ceded to other countries was rejected. This approach of a less-than-comprehensive treaty was motivated by considerations of time.

It was recognized that a shorter treaty would be faster to negotiate with Japan as well as between the Allied powers.

Even though United States officials themselves sometimes raised concerns about whether a comprehensive treaty might be better able to avoid future territorial disputes, the benefits of quick negotiation were prioritized.

Simultaneously, it was recognized that a political solution to the Dokdo issue would demand significant time and effort in negotiations.

This was the reason why United States Secretary of State Dean Rusk suggested to South Korean President Syngman Rhee that the issue of who owned Dokdo should be left unanswered, so that it could die a natural death.

In short, the lack of international political will and the temptation of quick negotiations led to Dokdo being strategically ignored by the treaty drafters.

Second, if the Allied countries had possessed abundant evidence that Dokdo was indeed South Korea’s rightful territory, it would have been more likely that they recognized the same in the treaty.

While examining the historical evidence, however, the United States was unable to unequivocally conclude that Dokdo used to be South Korean territory.

It is by now well-documented that the research of the United States in this regard relied extensively on Japanese sources within the State Department and the Library of Congress, apart from materials from the Japanese Foreign Office.

The range of sources relied on can be reasonably assumed to have propagated only the perspective of one side involved in the conflict.

This flawed methodology of the research work undertaken by the United States led to them underestimating the veracity of the South Korean contention, and probably made it easier for the shift in their stance between the original draft and the final version of the treaty.

Finally, it must be remembered that the treaty drafters, particularly the United States, themselves could have potentially gained by not explicitly transferring Dokdo to South Korea.

The strategic value of Dokdo was well-recognized – in fact, after the surrender of Japan, armed forces from the United States had started using Dokdo as a bombing range.

Expressing this strategic relevance even more clearly, United States Political Advisor for Japan William J. Sebald had opined that security considerations might render the option of maintaining weather and radar stations on Dokdo a “matter of interest” to the United States.

Had there been an explicit transfer of the sovereignty of Dokdo to South Korea, it might have become more difficult for the United States or other Allied countries to potentially use the territory for strategic purposes.

At least to some extent, this may have dissuaded the treaty drafters from pursuing the explicit transfer of Dokdo.

At the end of the day, it was a combination of self-interest and a failure to fully commit to the goal of just redistribution of occupied territory that resulted in Dokdo being omitted from the final version of the San Francisco Peace Treaty.

While the former made ambiguity in the issue seem desirable, the latter ensured that adequate attempts at historical research or the perseverance to engage in long and complicated negotiations were not present.

The cost, unfortunately, has been the sustained difference of opinion over Dokdo. In the future, as opportunities to resolve the confrontation hopefully arise again, it would be prudent to remember this lesson from the San Francisco Peace Treaty.

Then, perhaps, the dispute can have a peaceful closure.