By J. Berkshire Miller
Referring the dispute to the international court would have complications, but may be the only feasible solution.
Earlier this month, there was an article in The Korea Herald asking the question “will U.S. back Korea over Dokdo?” As Ankit Panda outlined in The Diplomat, it is quite clear that Washington would not choose between allies based on the U.S.-Korea Mutual Defense Treaty. Moreover, the analogy that some in South Korea are making, to U.S. inclusion of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands under the U.S.-Japan Treaty, is manifestly flawed. Yet, while the answer may be clear, the article signifies another disturbing trend over the past few years in Seoul which paints Japan, especially under the Abe administration, as a security threat. Meanwhile, Abe has spent the past few months, following his visit to Yasukuni Shrine last December, trying to keep his head down on worsening ties with Korea in an attempt to patch up relations.
Diplomatic jousting over Dokdo/Takeshima has been a constant over the past decade and has ebbed and flowed with the change of political leaders in South Korea and Japan. But, as Michael Devitt has explained (PDF), the status-quo on the dispute is relatively firm: “the only way South Korea will relinquish control is if military force is used to eject it from the islets. Even then, enough military capability would have to be maintained in the vicinity on a more or less permanent basis, to ensure that South Korea could not take the islets back. It is hard to imagine that Japan would ever be willing to attempt such a military undertaking, or could amass the capability to actually sustain control if it ever did seize the islets. In effect, South Korea’s de facto control is permanent.”
Read the full story at The Diplomat