뉴스레터

"The root cause of the Dokdo issue is that the Korean people living in Ulleungdo were pulled out of the island. If Korean people were allowed to move and live in Ulleundo, at least after Ulleungdo and Dokdo were recovered thanks to Ahn Yong-bok's activities, Japan wouldn't have incorporated Dokdo into their territory that easily. In this regard, I believe that the opening of Dokdo holds special significance. I expect that 300,000 Korean citizens will visit Dokdo next year."

The Island Evacuation Policy and Dokdo

During the Goryeo era, the Korean government, concerned about the expansion of the special unit (sambyeolcho)'s power, made a policy that would stop not only this unit's expansion but also the pillage of the Japanese pirates by pulling out to land all the residents of the islands along the southern and western coasts of the Korean peninsula. Consequently, all the islands, including Geojedo, Jindo, and Namahaedo, were left empty between 1270 and 1374. This island evacuation policy during the late Goryeo period was further enhanced in the Joseon Dynasty; unauthorized entry into the island was punishable by a hundred lashes, and taking refuge or hiding in the island was regarded as treason and punishable accordingly. This evacuation policy, which at first applied to the islands along the southern and western coasts only, expanded its scope to include the eastern coast. with the result that Ulleungdo also became a completely empty island by 1430.

Once the islands were left empty, Japanese pirates started to use them as stepping stones for pillage. Even Chinese vessels appeared and threatened the sea routes. Accordingly, naval posts were established urgently in Jindo, Wando, and Wido, etc. But Ulleungdo, which was much too far away from land, was left under the evacuation policy until the redevelopment order was issued in 1883. As Ulleungdo was left empty for a long period of time, Japanese people began entering the island for fishing operations. They used Dokdo as a sign for sailing toward Ulleungdo. When they couldn't catch enough fish, they would go to Dokdo to pick abalone as well. However, these fishing operations came to an end as the Tokugawa shogunate had a few rounds of negotiation with Joseon, thanks to the activities of Ahn Yong-bok, who went to Japan twice in 1693 and then in 1696, and recognized Ulleungdo and Dokdo as Joseon's territory.

The Re-intrusion on Ulleungdo

The diplomatic negotiation between Joseon and Japan over Ulleungdo and Dokdo was an extremely challenging process. For as long as ten months, the Japanese envoy refused to receive the reply that Ulleungdo was Joseon's territory, and used all kinds of attacks and threats on Joseon. Claiming that Ulleungdo, even if it originally belonged to Joseon, had become their territory since they had used it for seventy years, Japan went so far as to threaten a war. However, the Tokugawa shogunate didn't want any confrontation with Joseon and gave up Ulleungdo and Dokdo, despite the opinion of Tsuhima in charge of negotiation. Therefore, Joseon managed to save these islands.

Now that Ulleungdo and Dokdo were saved with difficulty, Joseon was supposed to move residents back to these islands and set up military farms in order to stop the same incident from happening again. On the contrary, Joseon tightened its control over immigration. But Ulleundo was not intruded upon again because Japan also maintained a closed-door policy. Once the closed-door policy was abolished after the Meiji Restoration, Japanese people began entering the waters of the East Sea. Beginning in the 1880s, they entered and lived in Ulleungdo, and refreshed their perception of Dokdo in the process. Meanwhile, the government of imperial Japan, having broken the ties between Joseon and Qing with the Sino-Japanese War, started the Russo-Japanese War in February 1904 in order to avoid the intervention of Russia.

The Disseizin of Dokdo

Although their early surprise attacks were successful, Japan lost one-third of their naval forces in May 1904. By June, Japan lost the control of the sea completely as another three battleships sank and 1,095 troops on board drowned with it.

Getting desperate, the Japanese navy built lookout towers in strategic points, such as Jukbyeon, Ulsan, Geomundo, and Jejudo, and connected them with submarine cables. They also decided to build a lookout tower in Ulleungdo and connect it to Jukbyeon with a submarine cable. Meanwhile, as Takashimamaru (高島丸) and many other vessels sank, Japan was forced to choose four out of six heavy cruisers and deploy them in the Straits of Korea, even though they couldn't take Port Arthur. And to keep watch on the Vladivostok fleet heading south, they built lookout towers, three in Ulleungdo and one in Dokdo. In Ulleungdo, which was already inhabited by Joseon people by then, only sites for lookout towers were requisitioned. Dokdo, on the other hand, was uninhabited and therefore requisitioned as a whole.

The Recovery of Dokdo and Thereafter

Dokdo, which fell prey to the greed of imperialism, came back to the Korean people when they were liberated from Japan in 1945. However, Dokdo was off-limits to the Korean people. They weren't allowed to visit the island unless for special purposes, such as academic research or media coverage. As soon as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea went into effect in 1994, Japan started to openly provoke Korea over Dokdo. In response, Korea built berth facilities in Dokdo, which were completed in 1997. But that was it. Dokdo remained off-limits to the public. The number of allowed visitors was 649 in 1999, 1,472 in 2000, and 1,533 in 2001, and so on. Since the number of people allowed to land at a time was limited, sometimes not all passengers on a single ship were allowed to land. Therefore, the dock was in chaos every time a ship came in and tried to unload its passengers.

To unify Dokdo policies, the Korean government set up a temporary organization called 'The Presidential Commission on True History for Peace in Northeast Asia.' For a start, the Commission unified the different data on Dokdo in use by different departments and announced the unified data in the official gazette. And the Commission called a meeting of related government agencies in order to ease the limit on the number of visitors to Dokdo. Unexpectedly, however, seven out of the eight agencies called to the meeting, the remaining one being North Gyeongsang Province, opposed the easing of the limit on the number of visitors to Dokdo. Their arguments were all on the valid grounds that it would unnecessarily provoke Japan, cause damage to the environment of Dokdo, raise safety concerns, and be detrimental to the protection of the seagulls as natural monuments. The first meeting had to be adjourned, and the second meeting scheduled. And then efforts were made to persuade the opposing agencies.

When it was decided that the opponents were almost persuaded, and the second meeting was called, there was another unexpected obstacle. As it turned out, consent from the Cultural Properties Committee was required. The second meeting ended up being adjourned as well. And efforts were made to persuade the individual members of the Cultural Properties Committee. But it was pointed out again that since the island was small, it could raise a safety issue if more than two hundred people landed at a time. It was decided that North Gyeongsang Province would review safety by letting passengers disembark from the biggest ship Hankyeore loaded to the full capacity (445 passengers) and videotaping the ensuing situation. It was confirmed that there wasn't any problem at all while the passengers landed, took photographs, did other activities in the island, and embarked. It turned out to be calmer and safer than when the number of visitors was restricted.

After such a struggle, it was decided that the visitor limit would be increased first to 200 and then in phases to 470, with the upper limit of 1,880 visitors per day. As a result of increasing the limit on visitors to Dokdo, although the road to the decision to do so was rocky, the number of visitors to the island this year has reportedly reached 220,000 already.

The root cause of the Dokdo issue is that the Korean people living in Ulleungdo were pulled out of the island. If Korean people were allowed to move and live in Ulleundo, at least after Ulleungdo and Dokdo were recovered thanks to Ahn Yong-bok's activities, Japan wouldn't have incorporated Dokdo into their territory that easily. In this regard, I believe that the opening of Dokdo holds special significance. I expect that 300,000 Korean citizens will visit Dokdo next year.