Dokdo: When Stubborn Facts Come Back to Haunt You

Ray | Digital Journalist | awesome.ai.life@gmail.com | March 13, 2026

In March 2026, the Dokdo dispute is back on the surface — and this time, Japan isn't even trying to be subtle.

On March 12, during a session of the House Budget Committee, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi declared that Japan would "make absolutely clear to the international community" its claim to Dokdo. The timing was pointed: just two months had passed since President Lee Jae-myung's January summit in Nara — the meeting that was supposed to reopen shuttle diplomacy between Seoul and Tokyo. Before that, Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi had already set the tone in his February 20 parliamentary address, calling the islets "Japan's inherent territory under both historical fact and international law." Two days later, on February 22 — Takeshima Day — the Takaichi government sent a vice-ministerial official rather than a cabinet member to the annual ceremony, a deliberate half-step back from full provocation.

The pattern is almost elegant in its cynicism: assert the principle loudly, then pull back just enough to keep the diplomatic relationship intact. Tokyo speaks cooperation while simultaneously reaching for the old territorial lever. This is what the Takaichi cabinet looks like right now.

But this is not a piece about outrage. It is a piece about what Alfred North Whitehead, in Adventures of Ideas (1933), called stubborn facts — resistant realities that cannot be erased or rewritten by political convenience or interpretive preference. Where Dokdo is concerned, those facts are numerous, durable, and in some cases buried not in Korean archives but in Japan's own official documents.

I. Layers of History: From 512 CE to 1877

The earliest recorded Korean sovereignty over Dokdo reaches back to 512 CE. According to Samguk Sagi (1145), the Silla general Isabu subjugated the island state of Usan-guk that year, incorporating it into the kingdom. Later texts consistently place Usando — the historical name for Dokdo — within that territory. That is fifteen centuries of recorded history.

The Sejong Sillok Jiriji (1454), a Joseon royal geographical survey, records Ulleungdo and Usando as two islands belonging to Uljin County in Gangwon Province. The text notes they are "not far apart and visible on a clear day." A necessary caveat: the direct equation of Usando with Dokdo is not explicitly confirmed in this document alone. Japanese scholars argue Usando refers to Jukdo, a small islet near Ulleungdo. The identification becomes unambiguous only later. The Donggukmunheon Bigo (1770) states plainly: "Ulleung and Usan are both territories of Usan-guk, and Usan is what the Japanese call Matsushima" — their name for Dokdo. In the wake of the Ahn Yong-bok incident of the 1690s, when diplomatic exchanges between Korea and Japan multiplied, the geographic identification solidified in Korean official records.

But the more decisive evidence comes not from Korean sources at all.

In December 1695, the Edo Shogunate asked the Tottori domain whether Ulleungdo belonged to it. The domain replied that neither Ulleungdo nor Dokdo were part of its territory. On that basis, the Shogunate issued a ban on crossing to Ulleungdo in January 1696, and formally confirmed Ulleungdo as Joseon territory through diplomatic correspondence in 1699.

Then came 1877, and the most explosive document of all.

As documented in the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, the Meiji government was compiling a modern land registry and needed to know whether Ulleungdo and Dokdo should be included. After five months of investigation, the Daijō-kan — the supreme organ of the Japanese state at the time — issued a directive on March 29, 1877, in the name of Grand Minister Iwakura Tomomi. It read:

"Regarding the matter of Takeshima [Ulleungdo] and one additional island [Dokdo], be advised that our country [Japan] has no connection to them."

The document sat in Japanese government archives for over a century. In 1987, Kyoto University professor Hori Kazuo excavated it and published his findings. The social backlash he faced was severe. The Japanese government's discomfort with this document has never been subtle.

The directive's force under international law remains disputed. Professor Lee Seong-hwan (Korean Journal of Political Science, 2021) argues it constitutes subsequent practice and a unilateral act under international law, giving it binding legal effect. Choi Cheol-yeong and Yoo Mi-rim (Korean Journal of International Law, 2018) counter that as domestic legislation, its international legal reach is limited. The academic debate continues. But the core point precedes any legal argument: Japan's own supreme state institution officially recorded, in its own documents, that Dokdo was outside Japan's domain. That is a stubborn fact. It does not require interpretation.

II. From Ahn Yong-bok to the Coast Guard: A Chain of Sovereignty

According to Sukjong Sillok (compiled 1728), Korean fisherman Ahn Yong-bok testified that in 1693 he received a document from the Shogunate stating "Ulleungdo is not Japanese territory" (鬱陵島非日本界). The caveat is important: this account is drawn from Ahn's testimony before the Bibyeonsa (Border Defense Council), and Japanese sources diverge on the specifics, leading Japanese scholars to question its reliability. What both sides agree on is the outcome: the incident triggered the Shogunate's 1696 ban on crossing to Ulleungdo. In 1696, Ahn returned to the islands, confronted Japanese fishermen, declared "Dokdo is Jasan-do, and it is our land," and expelled them. After this second voyage, he was arrested upon returning to Korea — crossing borders without authorization and creating a diplomatic incident. Execution was discussed. But officials including Sin Yeo-cheol argued in his defense: "He accomplished what the state itself could not." Ahn received a reduced sentence of exile. That judicial leniency — a formal act of state authority — is itself a legal record: the Joseon court officially ratified, through its own criminal proceedings, the legitimacy of asserting sovereignty over Dokdo and Ulleungdo.

In 1900, the Korean Empire issued Imperial Ordinance No. 41, formally incorporating Dokdo into Uldo County. The ordinance met the full requirements for territorial incorporation under international law: promulgation, public notice, and enforcement.

Against this backdrop, Japan's foundational claim — Shimane Prefecture Notice No. 40 of 1905 — rests on what lawyers call the terra nullius doctrine: Dokdo was an ownerless land, lawfully claimed by Japan under the right of occupation. This argument collapses under three layers of contradiction.

First, Imperial Ordinance No. 41 had already placed Dokdo within Korean jurisdiction five years earlier. The island was not ownerless. Second — and this is where the logic becomes damning — the 1877 Daijō-kan Directive had explicitly placed Dokdo outside Japan's domain. If Japan's own supreme organ recognized it as another country's territory in 1877, then Japan in 1905 could not simultaneously declare it an unclaimed land. Claiming as terra nullius what you had previously acknowledged as belonging to another state is not occupation. It is annexation. The legal character of the act matters. Third, the Korean Empire had by that point been stripped of its diplomatic capacity under Japanese pressure, making formal protest impossible. Some scholars further argue that since the Daijō-kan Directive was never formally repealed after the abolition of the Daijō-kan system in 1885, the Shimane Prefecture Notice violated its own superior legal norm.

SCAPIN 677 in January 1946 excluded Dokdo from Japanese territory under Allied occupation authority. SCAPIN 1033, issued five months later, barred Japanese vessels and nationals from approaching within twelve nautical miles of the islets.

The on-the-ground chain of Korean control runs from there: the Dokdo Volunteer Defense Corps, organized by residents of Ulleungdo under Hong Sun-chil, operated from 1953 to 1956; the North Gyeongsang Police Department's Dokdo Guard has maintained a permanent presence since 1956; the Dokdo Visitor Center opened in 2008, and a marine science base was constructed in 2018. By any measure of international law, this constitutes effective control.

III. Reading Dokdo in International Law

In territorial disputes, effectivités — the consistent exercise of governmental authority — is among the most powerful legal arguments available. Internationally, Korea's position on Dokdo is assessed as one of effective control. Korea's repeated refusal to bring the matter before the ICJ is not weakness. It is strategy.

This point deserves emphasis. Korea's refusal to accept ICJ jurisdiction is not about fearing the outcome. It is a principled rejection of the premise that there is a dispute to adjudicate. The moment Korea acknowledges a dispute, historically established sovereignty becomes a matter for judicial resolution — which is precisely the game Japan wants to play.

The UNCLOS framework adds a further dimension. Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, Dokdo may be classified as "rocks" rather than "islands" — since it is inhabited but cannot sustain independent economic life. Rocks carry only a 12-nautical-mile territorial sea, with no separate Exclusive Economic Zone. Here the logic requires careful handling. Japan would gain nothing from a "rocks" classification either — Japan too would lose EEZ rights based on Dokdo under that scenario. Japan's real objective is not the rocks classification itself. It is to establish Dokdo as a disputed territory first, then, through ICJ proceedings, seek recognition of it as an island under sovereign Japanese control — or at minimum, some form of shared jurisdiction. The sequence Japan is playing for runs like this: get the dispute acknowledged → bring it to ICJ → secure a ruling on "island" status → claim the EEZ. Korea's refusal to accept the premise of dispute is a refusal to step onto that game board at all.

IV. Why Now? The Takaichi Playbook

Sejong University professor Hosaka Yuji characterizes the Takaichi cabinet's foreign and security policy as a "dual strategy." The structure, as he analyzes it: amplify external security threats to justify military expansion and constitutional revision at home, while projecting strength outward.

This is my read. Takaichi's Dokdo posturing is not an expression of historical belief. It is political engineering. With Japan hemmed in by escalating China tensions, the domestic right wing needs a show of resolve — and Seoul makes a convenient target. The territorial card costs little diplomatically when played with calibration, and it rallies the base efficiently.

The calibration is visible. Takaichi had long argued for sending a cabinet minister to Takeshima Day — yet when February 22 arrived, she dispatched a vice-ministerial official, exactly as her predecessors had done. Kyodo News read it as "a gesture of consideration for managing the Japan-Korea relationship." Words at maximum volume; actions pulled back just enough. That is strategic ambiguity. Japan's own Nikkei weighed in, urging Takaichi to exercise "judgment befitting a statesman of higher dimension" given how critical the South Korea relationship has become amid China tensions. The pressure against this particular provocation is coming from inside the house.

And yet. At the March 12 budget session, Takaichi said she intends to "create the conditions to one day realize" sending a cabinet minister to Takeshima Day. Step back. Then inch forward. This is not emotion. It is architecture.

V. Effective Control Is Not Silence

The structural question now: is Korea's "No Dispute Strategy" still fit for purpose?

Korea's official position is unambiguous: "Dokdo is unequivocally Korean territory, historically, geographically, and under international law. No dispute over Dokdo exists, and Dokdo cannot be the subject of diplomatic negotiation or judicial resolution."

The position is correct. But a posture of defensive silence is no longer sufficient. Since 2022, there has been a visible effort in Japan's policy circles to undermine the significance of the Daijō-kan Directive. A think tank affiliated with Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has published the claim that the directive did not, in fact, place Dokdo outside Japan's domain. Shimane Prefecture has incorporated this reinterpretation into its educational materials. This is not academic dispute. It is an organized effort to delete a stubborn fact from the record.

Here a counter-argument must be confronted directly: Doesn't more active Korean speech play into Japan's "disputed territory" framing? It is a legitimate concern. But it conflates two fundamentally different kinds of speech. Asserting sovereignty is not the same as acknowledging a dispute. Saying "Dokdo is Korean territory, and here is the historical and legal evidence" is an exercise of sovereignty. Saying "let the ICJ decide" is an acknowledgment of dispute. The former strengthens effective control. The latter puts you on Japan's game board. Publishing scholarship on the Daijō-kan Directive in international journals, circulating the historical record in digital public spheres, presenting Korea's case at the UN — all of this falls into the first category. It does not create a dispute. It demonstrates, to the world, why no dispute can coherently exist.

This is where Whitehead's Process and Reality (1929) applies. He argues that an actual occasion — a fact — is stubborn but not self-propagating. It exists within a context that generates or extinguishes it. The Daijō-kan Directive was written in 1877. It sat in a Japanese government archive for over a century. It became part of the discourse only in 1987, when Professor Hori dug it out and published it at personal cost. The fact existed all along. The discourse did not. Stubborn facts do not speak for themselves. They need to be spoken.

Scholars from both countries have observed that while Japanese sources repeatedly reveal an awareness of Dokdo as territory beyond Japan's boundaries, no Korean source places it outside Korean jurisdiction. The weight of history is clear. The question is how to carry that weight consistently into international discourse.

Dokdo is not a territory about which there is "nothing to say because there is no dispute." It is a territory whose non-disputability must be continuously demonstrated. While Takaichi repeats herself at budget committees, Korea needs to speak — at the UN, in academic journals, across the digital public sphere. That is what effective control actually means.

Ray's Note

There is a common failure mode in writing about Dokdo: burying the counterarguments. The logic looks clean when you leave them out. "The Sejong Sillok Jiriji records Usando. The Daijō-kan Directive says it in Japan's own words. Therefore Dokdo is Korean territory." Tidy. But readers who know the objections will notice immediately that you are hiding something — and once they sense that, the whole argument loses credibility.

The Sejong Sillok Jiriji's Usando-Dokdo equation is genuinely contested in academic circles. Japanese scholars argue Usando refers to Jukdo. The international legal status of the Daijō-kan Directive is also disputed. Ahn Yong-bok's testimony carries reliability questions. "Speak more and you'll legitimize Japan's dispute framing" is a real argument, not a strawman.

This piece takes all of those objections head-on. On Usando: acknowledge the contest, but show that as chronology advances, the evidence converges. On the Directive: acknowledge the legal debate, but insist that the underlying fact — Japan's own highest institution formally excluding Dokdo from Japan's domain — stands regardless of how courts might weigh it. On Ahn Yong-bok: acknowledge the witness reliability problem, then pivot to what cannot be questioned — the judicial record of the Joseon court's sentencing decision, which is itself an act of state authority. On the speech-and-dispute-framing objection: address it directly in the text, drawing the line between sovereign assertion and dispute acknowledgment.

Weak arguments hide the counterevidence. Strong arguments can afford to surface it. When the facts are stubborn enough, you have the luxury of welcoming the objections.