Benutzer:Valentim/Liancourt-Felsen

• Symbolik und wirtschaftliche (EEZ-, Inselstaat-) Bedeutung ausweiten, siehe auch Diskussion dort, Festlandssockelprinzip einbringen bzw. nachfragen, Hinweis auf Socotra-Fels

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s:en:Category:Liancourt Rocks

More significantly, Japan and South Korea have agreed to the joint development of hydrocarbons in an area of overlapping continental shelf claims in the northern East China Sea.

After several serious incidents, Japan and China have established a mutual 'prior notification' regime for scientific research in the East China Sea. And Japan and South Korea are discussing a similar arrangement for the Sea of Japan.

Japan has told South Korea it will expand its exclusive economic zone in the East China Sea by making Torishima Island in Nagasaki Prefecture, its cardinal point, Japan-South Korea negotiation sources said Wednesday.

Japan expressed the intention during the just-concluded talks with South Korea aimed at resolving the dispute over demarcating their EEZs. The two-day talks ended Tuesday without a breakthrough, save for an agreement to meet again in September in Seoul to continue negotiations.

The Japanese government's move to expand its EEZ from Torishima and move further into the South Korean side, is seen as a countermeasure to South Korea's recent position to expand its EEZ around Dokdo, a pair of South Korea-administered islets known as Takeshima in Japan, in the Sea of Japan.

According to the sources, South Korea countered Japan's move involving Torishima, saying Torishima is a "rock" and as such, cannot be considered a cardinal point for EEZ.

The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea says that rocks unable to sustain human habitation or economic life of their own have no EEZ or continental shelf. Both Japan and South Korea are signatories to the convention.

South Korea in the past four rounds of EEZ talks between 1996 and 2000 said Dokdo is a rock and cannot become a cardinal point for EEZ.

South Korea took this stance because if it pushes Dokdo as a cardinal point for its EEZ, Japan may start pushing for Torishima, and this may result in a greater loss for South Korea with regard to its EEZ in the East China Sea, the sources said.

But in the latest EEZ talks, South Korea had pushed for a more extensive EEZ than it claimed in previous talks, changing its cardinal point from Ullung Island, west of the islets, to the islets themselves, according to ministry officials.

In pushing for a greater EEZ, South Korea reversed its position on the small rocky outcrops, saying Dokdo can be considered an island that can have an EEZ.

Japan has called this a "contradiction" from South Korea's past stance, the sources said. It told South Korea that Torishima should be treated as an "island" because it is possible to independently conduct economic activity there.

The islets known as Takeshima in Japan and Dokdo in South Korea have been a source of longstanding dispute as both countries claim sovereignty over them. South Korea has effectively administered the islets since 1954, with its coast guard personnel stationed there.

Koizumi was surprised to find the JCG had not performed surveys in the area near the islets off Shimane Prefecture in the Sea of Japan since 1975. Ishikawa explained to Koizumi the difficulties facing the JCG.

The Japan Coast Guard has 13 hydrographic survey ships but only two have been exclusively assigned in research for the continental shelf in the Pacific Ocean. This is because Japan has to hasten research to meet the 2009 application deadline for requesting the United Nations to approve extension of Japan's continental shelf, which has abundant underwater resources.

Using the rest of the smaller survey ships, the JCG put priority on surveys around ports and straits where the traffic is quite heavy. Very often, the water depth in areas around ports changes due to reclamation work and other factors. To prevent stranding accidents, there should be frequent surveys.

Compared to such locations, there is only a small amount of traffic near Takeshima and the depth is such that there is less possibility of ships running aground. Therefore, surveys in the area have been shelved for a long time.

Alarmed by the presence of the researcher, Obara and his colleagues thoroughly checked the Web site of the South Korean National Oceanographic Research Institute and found that South Korea was trying to put Korean names to underwater geographical features near Takeshima, now illegally occupied by South Korea, which calls the islets Dokdo. What's worse, the locations were included in an area which both Japan and South Korea claim as exclusive economic zones (EEZs).

Japan tends to take a passive attitude as it has virtually no maritime strategy.

Korea had been defining Dokdo as rocks in its negotiations regarding the EEZ with Japan, until 2006, when it decided to expand the EEZ around Dokdo, instead of a larger set of islands - Ulleungdo - which are closer to the Korean mainland.

Japan countered that move by designating Torishima island in Nagasaki prefecture as its cardinal point, thereby moving its EEZ further into the Korean side. The negotiations which resumed in 2006 remain deadlocked.

The latest outbreak, in which South Korean patrol boats were stationed to intercept Japanese survey vessels in waters both sides claim as their exclusive economic zone (EEZ), shows how thoroughly the Roh and Koizumi administrations have botched the chance to put their relationship on a fresh footing.

Those discussions have been starting and stopping for a decade. The governments did sign an agreement in 1998 to operate a joint fishing zone around the Dokdos but Japanese fishermen claim they have been repeatedly chased out of the area by the Koreans and occasionally physically attacked.

A diplomat in Seoul last week described Tokyo's style as passive aggressive and Seoul's as active aggressive.

Japanese governments have been trying for more than 40 years to have the islets issue adjudicated by the International Court of Justice. Unfortunately for them, an ICJ hearing requires the assent of both parties. Seoul governments have always insisted that even arguing the case with Japan would give Tokyo's claim more validity than it warrants. Despite constant South Korean assertions, however, there is a respectable body of international opinion that Japan's case is at least legally valid.

In Tokyo, meanwhile, officials nodded knowingly when the Roh administration responded just as the memo suggested it would: hotly and with little regard for the niceties of international law.

If Japan's decision to send survey vessels into the contested area against the objections of South Korea was provocative, the Roh administration's response of stationing coast guard patrol boats in their path was doubly so.

Though Japanese and South Korean officials yesterday welcomed the temporary agreement as averting a hazardous physical confrontation, there's little indication either side yet sees the need for a fundamental change of approach.

Recently Korea's Chungang Ilbo newspaper detonated the equivalent of a diplomatic car-bomb by publishing a confidential Japanese analysis of trends in the relationship with particular reference to Roh's role and the issue of the islets. The theme of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs internal report was that a damaged relationship was being further eroded by a deliberate strategy of provocation operated out of Roh's offices in Cheong Wa Dae, the presidential Blue House. The purpose was to rally public opinion to a lame duck administration.

The report said Seoul was manipulating anti-Japanese nationalism in the same fashion as past South Korean military regimes -- a highly offensive comparison for the left-of-centre Roh team. The report noted that the only times in the past 18 months that Roh's domestic approval ratings had risen out of the low 20s was when the President had publicly confronted the Japanese over Dokdo and history issues.