“Dokdo is our land. It is not just our land, it is a land of history with the history of 40 years clearly engraved.
Japan's right now to claim Dokdo is to claim the rights of the occupied territory by the war of imperialist aggression, and furthermore, the rights of the former colonial territory. This is an act that denies the complete liberation and independence of Korea. It is also an act of claiming the justification for the history of the aggression wars and massacres committed by Japan in the past, 40 years of exploitation and torture, imprisonment, forced conscription, and even comfort women.”
On April 25, 2006, Republic of Korea President Roh Moo-hyun's 'Special Discourse on Korea-Japan Relations'
'Dokdo, the beautiful territory of Korea' promotional video
The Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs produced a promotional video for Dokdo in 12 languages and posted it on the website.
There is also news that the Republic of Korea is winning a big win in the online Dokdo video promotion exhibition held by diplomatic authorities in Korea and Japan.
As a citizen of the Republic of Korea, watching a video for about 4 minutes will be a great force to protect Dokdo, our precious territory.
If you watch the video, you can see why Dokdo is Korean territory.
All Koreans, please watch the video. Also, please introduce a lot to those around you.
Promotional videos produced by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea must be viewed by 80% or more to increase the number of views.
Your little effort will help protect our precious territory, 'Dokdo' and make it known to the world.
Go to the promotional video of 'Dokdo, Korea's Beautiful Territory' produced in 12 languages ▶︎▶︎
A letter sent to Google to search for the name of 'Dokdo' of American students
Dear Mr. Page,
I am a Korean American who recently began high school, and I’d like to request for Google to change Liancourt Rocks’ name back to Dokdo. I understand that the reason why Google had changed the Dokdo’s name to Liancourt Rocks is because of Japan’s constant demands to change the name to Takeshima, so Google has changed the name to Liancourt Rocks to keep everything neutral. However, changing Dokdo’s name is a not a good choice. Korea has many historical documents and maps to prove that Dokdo belongs to Korea, not to Japan.
Long ago, Japan occupied Korea by force, taking all of our land as their territories. The conditions of life in Korea were extremely bad and the Koreans were ruthlessly crushed by the Japanese colonialism. But when the Hiroshima bombing occurred and WWII ended, Japan surrendered and Korea was freed from years of Japanese occupation. All of our territories, including Dokdo, were retrieved by Korea.
While Korea has actual, physical proof to verify Dokdo as our land, Japan does not have proof to show that Dokdo is theirs-- only the proof that states Dokdo is not part of their territory. Dokdo is Dokdo, not Liancourt Rocks, and I strongly encourage you to give us our island back by changing its name. Please give us back the island that represents our freedom from Japanese invasion and aggression. Dokdo has always been ours and still is to this day.
Sincerely,
Emilie Minkyung Kim
Dear Mr. Page,
I recently discovered that Google made a decision to stay neutral between the territorial dispute between South Korea and Japan by changing the name of Dokdo Island to “Liancourt Rocks”. I also learned that the name change influenced people worldwide to consider the island as an uninhabited piece of eroding land.
South Koreans, including my family, have been arguing against the Japanese to earn our territorial rights to the beloved island since the dawn of its founding during the 6th century. I find the name change to be disrespectful for neglecting the history of Korean sovereignty over Dokdo Island and for misunderstanding the island’s residency. Some Korean citizens live there for fishery and to protect the inhabitants of the island.
Liancourt Rocks is not the name that was mentioned in the historical context. It was named by a fisherman from 1849 who thought it was only inhabited by airbourne life with no human ownership. South Korea is currently striving to demonstrate their territorial privilege by amalgamating all the citizens to fight for Dokdo Island and to believe that it’s our territory. Your company, Google, compromised the Korean organization just by changing its title.
Throughout history, we’ve been terrorized by the Japanese under their rule over our country, which was inevitable when Japan forced us to support their supremacy. Since then, there has always been a dispute between Koreans and the Japanese, and Dokdo Island is one of the major contributing factors to our endless feud. In order to settle down the conflict, we need your help to change its name back to Dokdo Island for the rest of world to recognize the island as our territory and to consider our hard efforts to protect our treasured land. It may be a small island but it’s valuable to our history.
South Korea is not stepping away from something we’ve been fighting for centuries, even from a single operation from the most reliable engine of Internet history. We’re in need of your cooperation; please respect and understand our history.
Thank you for taking the time to consider this message.
Sincerely,
Brandon Daehyun Kim
Let's protect the name 'Dokdo'
The Foundation is a promotional material that informs that Dokdo is a unique territory of Korea. It was produced and distributed in 7 languages including English, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian, and Arabic. The background photo of the material used the Dokdo promotional billboard installed in the bay area.
The Jin Duck & Kyung Sik Kim Foundation first petitioned the White House in December 2012 after seeing that Yahoo and Bing, major Internet service companies in the United States, also deleted the Dokdo name from the map as of October 24, 2012. Starting with a petition on the site 'We the People' to urge Japan to stop disputes over Dokdo, we installed a billboard informing about Dokdo and held a signing campaign to correct Dokdo in February 2015.
Over 100,000 people participated in the 245-day signing campaign in which the Korean American community in Northern California participated in a widespread effort. The Foundation's representative, Hanil Kim, met with Professor John U. UC Berkeley and former California governor Pete Wilson (who served 1991-1999) and met with BGN, a substantive body that can influence Google. Name), etc.
If you search for Dokdo from Google Maps, Google's map service, a map will appear, but it is only marked with the name ‘Liancourt Reef’, which symbolizes territorial disputed areas. Until 2012, if you searched for ‘Dokdo’ in English on Google Maps, the Korean address ‘63, Isabu-gil, Dokdo, Ulleung-eup, Ulleung-gun’, was clearly displayed along with the map of Dokdo, but the address was suddenly deleted.
Regarding Google's measures to delete Korean addresses, Shimane Prefecture's General Affairs Department Dokdo official said, “It is highly appreciated that the misleading notation has been corrected. In the future, it is a policy to require Google to list Japanese addresses”. In addition, after Google Maps changed the name of Dokdo and East Sea, Dokdo alone is disappearing from Apple Maps.
Google and Apple's maps are widely used all over the world, so it can be said that the influence of the names of these maps is very large. In addition, the English version of the map of Microsoft's portal site'Bing' also marked Dokdo as 'Liancourt Reef' and the East Sea was also marked with the Sea of Japan as'Sea of Japan/East Sea' appeared. In addition, in the English version of Yahoo's map, Dokdo was not displayed on the map at all, and the name of the East Sea was also removed.
Google said about the recent map update, "At the same time taking a neutral position on the region, it has been revised to increase regional stance, and it is in line with the global policy applied for a long time, not related to any government request." However, they said it was “neutral”, but the Gulf of Senkaku/Diaowidao and Persia/Arabian accepted the position of both countries at the same time and marked them in parallel so that it would not be a problem when viewed by a third country, but Dokdo was turned into a reef. Of course this cannot be admitted as neutral, but Google says it is neutral.
'East Sea' is a name that Koreans have used for more than 2000 years. In the early 16th and 18th centuries, various names related to Korea such as ‘Korea Sea', 'Chosun Sea', and ‘Oriental Sea' were used more, but we were under Japanese colonial rule. It began to be widely used in 1929 when Japan submitted the name ‘Sea of Japan’ to the International Hydrographic Organization. In the name ‘Sea of Japan’, there is a bitter history of the Korean people who were deprived of their national rights. So, we have to recover more and more ‘East Sea’.
It is also contained in President Roh Moo-hyun's message, but Dokdo is a unique territory of Korea. However, Japan is challenged head-on to our sovereignty over Dokdo by claiming ‘Takeshima sovereignty’. In Japan's all-out war, not only the government but also the whole people must come forward to gather wisdom and seek countermeasures. Google, the world's most popular search engine, and Yahoo, the world's most visited homepage, and their companies are located in Sunnyvale and Mountain View, very close to us. Therefore, we must all join forces to protect Dokdo. The General Federation of Korean American Associations, Korean American Associations in each region, media groups, social groups, professional organizations, volunteer organizations, and all other compatriots must take the lead in protecting the Korean history of ‘Dokdo’.
Our foundation will do our best to protect our territory, ‘Dokdo’, as far as we can reach it. I think the truth of history will be preserved if Korean Americans and our compatriots from all over the world are together.
Get the name of ‘Dokdo’ back
Since 2012, The Jin duck and Kyung Sik Kim Foundation have been actively carrying out a campaign to protect Dokdo, starting with a campaign to participate in the White House online petition (We the People), which urges Japan to stop disputes over Dokdo. The disappearance of the name 'Dokdo' from Google Maps was a big shock to Koreans as well as Koreans. This is because 'Dokdo', which was regarded as Korea's native territory, is recognized by the international community as a territorial dispute.
The Jin Duck & Kyung Sik Kim Foundation first wanted to get the name 'Dokdo' back on Google Maps. First of all, billboards were installed near downtown San Francisco, where there are many floating populations in Northern California, near the Giants Baseball Stadium, and near the Palo Alto Freeway to announce that Dokdo is a unique territory of Korea.
Signature campaigns were also held. We launched a campaign to recover the name of Dokdo on Google Maps with the goal of 100,000 people and achieved the goal with great support. In addition, a writing and drawing contest was held to inform the second generation of Dokdo, which can be called our future. Korean school students from the Korean Association for Fun Korean Schools participated and played a major role in teaching Dokdo that Dokdo is Korea's unique territory every year.
The selection of unification scholarship students sponsored by the SF Democratic People's Republic of Korea was also used as an opportunity to promote Dokdo. Jin Duck & Kyung Sik Kim Foundation president Jonathan Kim changed the existing essay submission method to Dokdo publicity video production to transform students' perception of history. Also, the video produced was not only for mainstream American society but also for viewers around the world that Dokdo is Korean territory. It was used as a tool to inform the facts.
Jin Duck & Kyung Sik Kim Foundation President Jonathan Kim and Chairman Kim Soon Ran taking a commemorative photo with the honorees of' ‘Drawing Contest of Retrieving the name of Dokdo'.
Dokdo and comfort women research support
Jin Duck & Kyung Sik Kim Foundation have led the movement to restore Dokdo sovereignty and the establishment of the San Francisco Comfort Women's Memorial Monument donated $100,000 in donations to UC Berkeley Law School in January 2018 and addressed the dispute over Dokdo Island based on U.S. and international law and the human rights issues of Japanese comfort women victims. I supported to study about it. It is to protect Dokdo's sovereignty through academic research.
With a donation from the Jin Duck & Kyung Sik Kim Foundation, legal research on Dokdo, Japanese military comfort women, etc., which are sharp issues in Korea and Japan, began in earnest at UC Berkeley, and the research results are expected to be announced through seminars and academic conferences and are expected to be used in classes for students. It's possible.
UC Berkeley Dean Irwin Kemeranceke expressed his deep gratitude to the president Jonathan Kim and Chairman Kim Soon Ran, saying, “Through academic research, we are able to contribute to the development of US-Korea relations.” Prof. John Yoo, director of the UC Berkeley Korean Law Institute, who will focus on the issue of Dokdo sovereignty and Japanese military comfort women, said, “The Korean Law Research Institute is in-depth on important issues between Korea and Japan such as Dokdo and Japanese military comfort women with the support of the Jin Duck & Kyung Sik Kim Foundation You can now do legal research. This research achievement will provide valuable academic experience to students.”
Photos of ‘Retrieving the name of Dokdo’
