Commentary on themes by historical period

4. Territorial clauses in the Peace Treaty and Australia’s position

　On July 20, 1951, James Plimsoll, an Australian diplomat who at that time served as the Australian representative to the UN Commission for the Unification and Rehabilitation of Korea (UNCURK) in Busan, wrote in telegram No. 38¹¹ sent to the Australian Department of External Affairs that the “South Korean Foreign Minister had asked for our government’s support for its own proposed four amendments to the draft Peace Treaty.” One of these four matters was such that: (a) a request for the insertion of the wording “and all islands which were part of Korea prior to its annexation by Japan” just before the word “including” in Article 2(a); and the two islands of “DOK DO and PRANG DO” should be specifically mentioned in the text of the Peace Treaty.

　The above newfound document confirms that: in a letter dated July 19, 1951 from Yang Yu-Chan, South Korean Ambassador to the United States, to U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, South Korea demanded Takeshima, while around the same time it also made a request to Australia for the same.

　Telegram No. 32 sent by the Australian Department of External Affairs on July 25, 1951 to Plimsoll in Busan¹² stated that: “we would challenge the protocol and behavior of the South Korean Government who has approached us via you as an intermediary to deal with issues of this kind, in particular. However, we would be allowed to simply communicate to the South Korean Foreign Minister, in a completely unofficial manner, our provisional response to his suggested amendments to the Treaty of Peace with Japan. We are not quite certain about how practical South Korea’s proposed revisions are, but in principle, you might as well tell [South Korea (added by the author)] that we can understand, in sympathy, the South Korean Government’s desire to secure its own interests through such a treaty,” showing that Australia was unwilling to act as an intermediary to make South Korea’s request happen.

　Speaking of Takeshima, the Australian Department of External Affairs noted that “we are unable to locate the two islands you mentioned on any maps of Korea in our possession.” This comment corresponds, more or less, to certain records on the part of the United States¹³, according to which: even though the matter in question had been investigated at the request of the ROK Embassy in the United States, a Mr. Boggs, an expert on geography in the U.S. State Department, said that “he had ‘tried all resources in Washington,’ he could not identify Dokdo or Parangdo,” and another State Department official in charge of Korea, “Frelinghuysen reported that an ROK Embassy officer had told him they believed Dokdo was near Ulleungdo, or Takeshima Rock, and suspected that Parangdo was too.”

　A document dated December 2, 1953, compiled by the New Zealand Department of External Affairs, titled “Japanese-Korean Relations with Special Reference to the Dispute concerning Takeshima Island” contained, under the section “The Takeshima dispute,” a record of the South Korean Foreign Minister’s request to the Australian Government as seen in the telegram dated July 21, 1951¹⁴. According to this, the South Korean Foreign Minister requested that “Dokdo” and “Prangdo” should become Korean territories, explaining that “these two islands were some distance to the south of the mainland.” The South Korean side could not even provide precise coordinates for these islands. It was only natural that the United States and Australia decided to turn down South Korea’s request.

　The U.S. State Department document “Treaty Changes” dated August 7, 1951¹⁵, a summary of the United States’ views and discussions in terms of comments from countries concerned on the draft Peace Treaty, and whether or not their suggestions should be incorporated into the treaty text, has found that South Korea was the only country that made a request for the insertion of “Dokdo” and “Parangdo” in Article 2(a) of the draft treaty. It follows, therefore, that “making Takeshima belong to South Korea is just what only the country itself wants and requests, and such a demand cannot be of any force and effect in determining sovereignty over Takeshima,” which represents an established fact.