How Japan and Korea’s Territorial Dispute Outlasted Normalization

Twenty years after Japan’s unconditional surrender to the Allied Powers, and 14 years after the beginning of negotiations, Japan and South Korea finally signed the Treaty of Basic Relations on June 22, 1965. At the time, the two governments made a conscious decision to not formally settle the question of sovereignty over the Liancourt Rocks – called Takeshima in Japan and Dokdo in Korea – which had not been explicitly resolved in the San Francisco Peace Treaty, and continued to be a stumbling block in bilateral relations ever since the declaration of the “Rhee Line” in 1952.

The Liancourt Rocks are two small islets located midway between Japan and South Korea. Though administered by South Korea since 1954, the issue has been a continuous irritant in the Japan-South Korea relationship. To this day, Japan’s celebration of “Takeshima Day” and claiming of the islands in its foreign policy report is an annual source of friction between the two U.S. allies.

In 1965, the two governments exchanged notes affirming that any outstanding bilateral issues not resolved in the normalization treaty would be discussed and diplomatically negotiated later. This ambiguity allowed the Japanese side to assume the Liancourt Rocks would be discussed as part of the “outstanding issues,” and the Korean side to maintain that the Liancourt Rocks were not disputed and so did not need to be settled during normalization.

In 1962, the Minister for Foreign Affairs assured the Japanese people that relations with South Korea would only be normalized after the matter of sovereignty over the Liancourt Rocks was settled. The Liancourt Rocks are important to Japan not only for reasons of national pride, but also because of the access – or lack of access – to fisheries that sovereignty could entail. Yet despite the material importance of the issue, and even though the Liancourt Rocks were discussed several times during the 14 years of negotiations, the territorial dispute was never placed on the official agenda of the talks.

Why did the Japanese government not even try to settle sovereignty over the Liancourt Rocks in 1965? The obvious answer would be the sheer impossibility of resolution – 50 years later, the problem still persists. However, the difficulty of the issue alone cannot explain why the Japanese government was more willing to forego a settlement over the islands in 1965 than they were at any point in the 14 years leading up to the treaty signing. Japanese politicians and negotiators chose to forego a resolution of the Liancourt issue in 1965 because the costs of not normalizing the Japan-Korea relationship had increased exponentially.

Costs had increased because of changes in both Japanese and South Korean domestic politics and geostrategic conditions, as Victor Cha argued in “Bridging the Gap,” a look back at the 1965 normalization treaty published in Korean Studies in 1996. Domestically, the Japanese government faced pressure from various interests to achieve reconciliation: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (who argued that Park Chung-hee’s need for loans and legitimacy now gave Japan the best bargaining position possible), conservative politicians (who believed they could bargain for the lowest compensation package with an authoritarian regime in South Korea), the business lobby (who wanted to tap South Korea as a market for Japanese exports and win contracts underwritten by the compensation package), and security officials (who were concerned about regional security developments). By 1965, all these actors argued that the cost of foregoing normalization was too high.

On the strategic front, Japanese officials faced renewed U.S. pressure for a Japan-South Korea settlement beginning in early 1964, and intensifying in 1965. Viewing China as an increasing threat, and also concerned by the deteriorating situation in Southeast Asia, the United States was eager to see a normalized relationship between its two major Asian allies. Washington saw China as a growing threat to regional stability because of China’s split with the Soviet Union, mutual defense treaty with North Korea, support for Southeast Asian communist movements, successful nuclear tests in October 1964 and May 1965, and aggressive rhetoric regarding Taiwan. The United States was also concerned by France’s diplomatic recognition of China, Japan’s increasing economic ties with the country, the failure of SEATO, and its own missteps in Vietnam.

In the final week leading up to the treaty signing, when U.S. pressure for a settlement was particularly strong, Asahi Shimbun’s coverage both helped prepare the Japanese public to accept a non-resolution, and, at the last-minute, criticized the government for compromising. Tracing five articles that Asahi published on the Takeshima/Dokdo issue in the week leading up to the signing of the treaty provides an interesting window into how the Japanese public would have viewed the issue at the time.

The front page of the morning news on June 16 declared, “Takeshima Problem Moves to the Stage of Japan-Korea Negotiations: Final Attribution [of Sovereignty] to be Foregone.” This article absolves the Japanese government of responsibility due to the difficulty of resolution. After laying out how irreconcilable the Japanese and Korean governments’ positions were (Japan favored resolution through the United Nations, while South Korea favored resolution through third party mediation), the article explains to the public that not resolving the question of sovereignty may be a necessary step to reach an accord with South Korea that still maintains Japan’s principled position.

On June 20, Asahi reported on the bilateral foreign ministers’ meeting that would convene the next day: “Seeking a Political Compromise?: No Mention of Specific Island Name.” Similar to the article four days before, it prepares people for the impossibility of reaching a resolution. Giving due consideration to South Korea’s “national sentiment,” the article explains, the two sides are unlikely to even specify the Liancourt Rocks in their agreement to resolve outstanding issues at a later time. Unlike comments from opposition parties, the tone of this article is not overly critical of the Japanese government’s negotiating position. On the front page a day later, another article reaffirmed the same point. “Signing of the Treaty Tomorrow Confirmed: Ongoing Final Adjustments over the ‘Takeshima Problem’” even expressed surprised relief that the Korean side was willing to accept this solution.

But not all of Asahi’s coverage was positive. On the day of the signing, it suddenly took a subtle, but decidedly negative, turn. In the morning, Asahi ran a human interest story, “A Father’s Unfulfilled Wish: A Son’s Determination to Develop Phosphate Ore,” about a Japanese miner who lost his investment on the Liancourt Rocks. The miner sued the Japanese government to compensate him for his investment but the courts threw the case out; two months later, the miner’s health deteriorated and he passed away – “speaking of Takeshima until his dying breaths.” Indirectly, the piece criticizes the Japanese government for giving up on the Liancourt Rocks.

On the front page of the evening edition that same day, Asahi led with an article titled “Agreement on ‘Takeshima Resolution’: To Be Settled Under the Rubric of Overall Settlement of Outstanding Issues.” It describes the compromise as a “typical pattern” in which an almost-impossible “deadline” is set to force a compromise on an otherwise intractable issue. However, there is disapproval of the Japanese government’s tactic, finely expressed by the comment that Japan had to work really hard and give up a lot because they prioritized the “time limit” so much. The article concludes that on the Liancourt Rocks the final settlement “fell far short” of the government’s promise to figure out a way to resolve the “Takeshima problem.”

Asahi’s coverage of the normalization treaty as it was being signed foreshadowed issues that continue to dog the dispute over the Liancourt Rocks to this day. While on one hand, Asahi – and the Japanese public – accepted that compromise with South Korea was inevitable, on the other hand, there was latent frustration at the Japanese government’s inability to reach a resolution.