The government has scrapped its plan to set up a safety support center on the country’s easternmost rocky islets of Dokdo, the prime minister’s office said Tuesday.
The decision to shelve the plan to build the facility for the safety of Dokdo visitors was shelved during Prime Minister Chung Hong-won’s meetings with officials from the foreign and maritime ministries on Saturday, according to the office.
The prime minister’s office said the latest decision was made in consideration of the international maritime law and possible issues in the scenery and management of Dokdo, but sources noted that the cancellation was due to potential diplomatic feuds with Japan.
“If the center is set up, it could give Japan a pretext to invoke international laws like the maritime law and trigger a territorial dispute over Dokdo, and the (South Korean) government is extremely averse to it,” a high-ranking government official said. “The government’s stance is that such matters should be fully reviewed.”
Dokdo has been a recurring source of South Korea’s diplomatic tensions with Japan with the neighboring country often renewing territorial claims to the set of islets.
South Korea rejects Japan’s claim to Dokdo as nonsense because the country regained its independence from Japanese colonial rule and reclaimed sovereignty over its territories, including Dokdo and many other islands around the Korean Peninsula. (Yonhap)
