Shortly after Japanese Ambassador to South Korea Toshinori Shigeie finished his July 7 lecture at the Korea Press Center in Seoul, a man in the crowd began shouting, rushed the podium, and hurled a fist-sized lump of concrete at Shigeie. The missile missed its intended target but hit the ambassador’s translator, injuring her slightly.

The man, later identified as 50-year-old Kim Ki-jeong, was carrying leaflets from a political group that disputes Tokyo’s claims to the scatter of islands it refers to collectively as Takeshima but Koreans call Dok-do. Kim was handed over to police, still protesting that the Japanese Embassy had refused to answer his letters about Dok-do’s sovereignty.

South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan quickly telephoned Ambassador Shigeie to apologize for the incident, and promised to boost security around the Japanese Embassy.

In private, however, the minister may very well sympathize with Kim’s beliefs. While the islands in question had been in the headlines with less frequency of late, the issue of sovereignty of this lonely Sea of Japan outpost – and whose very name is another bone of geopolitical tension between Tokyo and Seoul – is a rocky one that refuses to sink below the waves.

When the new Democratic Party of Japan government released its first Diplomatic Blue Book in April, the issue surfaced again. South Korea may have been hoping the left-leaning party would emphasize closer relations and harmony with its Asian neighbors and drop the long-running territorial disputes that Liberal Democratic Party governments had been so inflexible about. If so, it was disappointed.

“No concessions should be allowed in matters concerning our territory,” South Korean presidential spokesman Park Sun-kyoo told reporters at a briefing in response to the Blue Book’s description of the island as Japanese territory. “Japan’s unreasonable claim, based on an incorrect view of history, is not good, not only for relations between Korea and Japan, but also for the future of Japan,” he added.

The Japanese government threw a stone of its own the same month when it approved social studies textbooks for elementary schools that described the islands as Japanese territory. The dispute soon escalated into the familiar tit-for-tat exchanges. The Foreign Ministry summoned Ambassador Shigeie to receive an official complaint, and Korean politicians demanded that Seoul withdraw its ambassador to Tokyo and encourage more people to live on the islands.

In turn, Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada asked his Korean counterpart to halt activities in waters around the islands, which include research and geological surveys. The minister’s predictable reply: the islands are Korean, and Seoul would do whatever it liked there.

“It all boils down to national identity,” said Shin Yeon-sung, secretary-general of the Northeast Asian History Foundation. “Japan first occupied those islands in 1904 when it realized their strategic importance in the war against Russia. That was the very first part of Korea to be seized by Japan, so it is very symbolic for us.”

The Northeast Asian History Foundation, set up in 2006, was funded in part by South Korea’s government. Its stated mission: “Establishing a basis for peace and prosperity in Northeast Asia by confronting distortions of history that have caused considerable anguish in this region.”

One of the foundation’s primary tasks is to make South Korea’s historic case for control of Dok-do. Another is to convince the world to rename the Sea of Japan the East Sea.

According to Korea’s version of the history of the islands, Shimane Prefecture claimed them as part of its territory after the 1910 occupation of the Korean peninsula. That remained unchanged until Imperial Japan’s defeat in World War II.

The San Francisco Peace Treaty also factored into the dispute. According to Korea, early drafts of the postwar agreement named Dok-do among the thousands of islands and other territories to be returned to their historic owners across Asia. By the sixth draft, however, listing all the place names had become so cumbersome that for the sake of convenience only three major Korean islands were identified by name.

“We have written, historic proof that Dok-do is part of Korea,” Shin insists. “The islands are first mentioned in AD512 in the diary of a king of the Shilla Dynasty.”

The foundation has also amassed an impressive collection of maps – Korean, Japanese, and others made by Western explorers – that it believes will support Seoul’s territorial claim.

Out of all the evidence assembled, however, perhaps no document is as persuasive as the map Japan’s own Department of the Interior produced in 1877. The original resides in the National Archives of Tokyo, but the foundation possesses a framed copy showing that Japan’s Great Council of State sent a letter in March of that year to the department making it clear that Japan had no relationship with either Dok-do or nearby Ulleungdo Island.

Shin points out that another map Japan’s Military Affairs Bureau drew the same year did not even include the islands. “How can they say they controlled the islands when they didn’t even mark them on their maps?” he asks.

Diplomatically, Shin declines to comment on Japan’s internal political situation and how that might inspire calls from right-wing nationalists for the islands to be returned to Japan, but hopes cooler heads will prevail.

“This is not an argument, and we will not take this issue to a court to decide because this is Korean territory, historically, geographically and legally,” he says. “But we do not want this issue to remain a thorn in the side of bilateral relations. This is an important year for us – the 100th anniversary of the annexation of Korea by Japan – and we think it is time to look forward in our relationship with Japan rather than backward.”

On the other side of the disputed patch of territory, Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also insists that it wants to improve the broader working relationship, particularly given the threat North Korea poses to both nations, and that discussions and cooperation are the best way forward.

Just as in South Korea, however, the government in Tokyo is digging its heels in when it comes to Takeshima.

“Our claim that the islands are Japanese territory is based on historical facts and international law,” says Takeshi Akamatsu, deputy head of the press division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “We’ve said this repeatedly and will continue to repeat our position around the world whenever we have the opportunity. This is an illegal occupation of Japanese territory by Korea.”

Japan wants to take the dispute to the International Court of Justice and give both sides the chance to stake their claims to the islands, but Seoul refuses.

“We are confident of the historical and legal basis of our claim and believe the court would recognize that,” Akamatsu states. “The court is an impartial and independent third party, but if one side refuses to accept its jurisdiction there is nothing we can do.”

Tokyo is also dismissive of the evidence Korea has gathered to support its claim. Akamatsu says, for example, that maps from the 17th and 18th centuries are not reliable, since islands went by different names even in the same country, while other details are similarly ambiguous.

“We are not convinced that the Korean and Western maps prove the Korean claim,” Akamatsu says, adding that Tokyo has also been busy putting together documents and maps that back its version of the truth.

“We’ve been proposing for 60 years to go back to the international court for an impartial decision, but the most important thing for us is to keep this issue quiet in order to protect and improve our cooperation with South Korea in the region,” Akamatsu notes, echoing Shin. “If we cannot solve the issue now, we will continue to repeat our position, but let us not forget the more important bigger picture.”

Ferries that take day-trippers out to Dok-do are obliged to stop briefly at Ulleungdo, around 80 kilometers from the epicenter of the dispute. Standing on the dock there is a weather-beaten man named Sung Kyu-lim, clad in a white T-shirt that proclaims Dok-do as Korean territory.

Sung runs a souvenir shop in the town, where he has lived for more than a decade. “People here consider Dok-do to be in our backyard, and you can even see it from here when the weather is good,” he claims.

And how many times has he been there?

“Been there?” he echoed. “I’ve never been there. What’s the point? I know it’s there, and I know it’s Korean territory. Why would I need to go there to prove that?” ❶