[KS] Library of Congress Korean Controversy

[David Scofield]

Scott has made some excellent points here (I think nationalistic spam sums the
original post quite well), and his queries (posted below) cut to the heart of
the dispute. 

I'm surprised there are no responses to his core questions... 

"
1. It is frequently claimed that Japan "stole" the Dokto-Takeshima islets in
1905, but from my understanding they were unoccupied at the time and thus Japan
invoked the principle of "terra nullius" in justifying its claim to them. Is it
too much of stretch, then, to claim that their occupation was quite separate
from Japan's subsequent colonization of Korea?
 
2. The islets were not covered in the Treaty of San Francisco, so from a
strictly legal standpoint wouldn't the islands legally still belong to Japan if
sovereignty over them was not legally and formally handed back to the ROK in
1952? Historical arguments aside, is not this lack of legal clarity sufficient
proof for the existence of a "dispute" which many on the Korean side claim does
not exist?
"


David
 

Quoting "J.Scott Burgeson" <jsburgeson at yahoo.com>:

> Gene, all I will say is that I retracted the term "spam" (even though a
> certain someone has clearly avoided my request for dialogue on this issue),
> and I wonder if I really seem to think that Dokdo-Takeshima is a "non-issue"?
> "Neutral" is a loaded term now? What's next, being "fair" and "objective"? As
> for "lobbying" for a foreign government, Hana Kim is not a US citizen so what
> is a better term for me to have used in her case?  
> 
> Around and around and around in circles we go!
> 
> --Scott Bug
> 
> 
> 
> --- On Tue, 7/22/08, Eugene Y. Park <eugene.y.park at uci.edu> wrote:
> 
> > From: Eugene Y. Park <eugene.y.park at uci.edu>
> > Subject: Re: [KS] Library of Congress Korean Controversy
> > To: "Korean Studies Discussion List" <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
> > Date: Tuesday, July 22, 2008, 4:58 PM
> > Dear Scott,
> > 
> > I appreciate the spirit of your suggestions, but some of
> > the "incidental
> > rhetorical terms" that have been
> > used--"lobbying" and "neutral," for
> > example--seem pretty loaded to me. And didn't this
> > whole discussion get
> > started on the questions about "nationalistic
> > spamming" over "non-issues"
> > and "lobbying?" Again I do not know Hana Kim, but
> > to suggest, for example,
> > that the hapless librarian was lobbying for a foreign
> > government seems
> > like a serious charge to me. What do you think?
> > 
> > Of course, there's the islet question itself, on which
> > I think we've
> > already had plenty of discussions here in the past, if
> > I'm not mistaken. 
> > In this light, each of the two statements that you make
> > (below) seem to
> > oversimplify the frustratingly complex situation.
> >
> 
> 
>       
> 
>