These Islands Are Ours

"Territorial disputes are one of the main sources of tension in Northeast Asia. Disputes often arise out of a widely shared public perception that the region in question is of the utmost importance to the nation. That's frequently not the case, at least when it comes to socio-political and economic factors. The tiny and remote islets, known as Dokdo in South Korea and Takeshima in Japan, for instance, have no such value. In fact, in the early 1960s, both Japanese and Korean negotiators recognized their insignificance and considered blowing them up rather than resolving their ownership. Today, citizens and groups in both countries have mounted sustained campaigns to protect the islets as the heart of the nation, forcing politicians who would rather ignore the islets altogether to take them into account in their bilateral relationship. Such disputes are taking place throughout the region and have wide-ranging domestic and international consequences. Focusing on non-state actors rather than political elites, Alexander Bukh explains how and why apparently inconsequential territories become central to national and nationalist discourse. These Islands Are Ours draws on a vast array of primary research in four languages, particularly reports produced by the actors, interviews, and governmental data to challenge conventional wisdom. Bukh shows that public campaigns centering on territorial disputes are not about the territory in question. Territorial disputes that were historically unimportant, can become salient when non-state actors bring the issue to the fore of domestic political discourse. This book studies the origins and transformation of such campaigns in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, finding that they originate during times of economic, social, or political crisis. Demands from the public and non-state groups to recover or protect the territory are a rhetorical device used to criticize the perceived failures of the state during periods of upheaval. Because of the widely shared agreement that territory is of utmost importance to the state, disputed territory can be easily turned to this purpose. An unintended consequence of these campaigns is that, as a territory is increasingly identified as a national treasure, or of central value to state wholeness, it emerges as a symbol of national identity. These Islands Are Ours gives us a new way to understand the nature of territorial disputes and how they inform national identities by exploring their social construction, amplification, and ideological consequences"-