In response to a week of ultra-nationalist craziness from South Korea, Japan has announced that it will be submitting the Liancourt Rocks territorial dispute to the International Court of Justice:
“Aiming to resolve the issue calmly, fairly and peacefully, we will propose to take this issue to the International Court of Justice,” Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura told a news conference.
“If South Korea believes its claim to Takeshima is justifiable, we strongly hope it would accept our government’s proposals,” he said.
Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba later delivered the proposal to South Korean ambassador to Japan Shin Kak-Soo during a meeting in Tokyo.
It is the third time that Japan has taken this step. The other two times were in 1954 and 1962, not long after South Korean troops occupied the rocks. South Korea refused to cooperate with the ICJ, so the proposals hit a dead end.
Somebody at the Yomiuri went through the trouble of making this handy graphic that shows how an ICJ trial would work:
Unfortunately, the process will go to the “Trial cannot start” box. Despite its continual insistence that historical evidence shows the rocks are clearly Korean territory, South Korea will never let the International Court of Justice consider the value of that evidence.
As this video shows, Korean nationalists go all over the world trying to convince people that the Liancourt Rocks belong to Korea, but they avoid making their case where it would actually count:
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