독도로 성지순례 갑시다!

독도로 성지순례 가는 한국인

Each day, weather permitting, hundreds of South Koreans sail to this cluster of nearly uninhabitable islets and outcroppings, seven seasick hours from the Korean mainland.

매일 날씨만 허락한다면 수백명의 한국사람들이 본토에서 배로 7시간이나 걸리는 무인도에 다름 없는 바위섬 독도에 방문한다.

뭐 대충 이런 내용으로 시작하는 기사입니다.

독도에 대한 우리 국민의 관심과 염원, 그리고 일본의 억측에 불과한 허위주장의 만행을 국제사회에 알리려는 우리의 노력이 결실을 맺고 있는 것 같아 기분이 나쁘지는 않습니다. 특히 독도로의 여행을 우리나라 사람들의 성지순례에 비유하고, 일본의 독도 영유권 주장 부분을 “내 아내를 자신의 것이라고 우기는 것 만큼이나 분노가 나는 일”이라고 정말 우리의 억울한 마음을 대변하는 듯한 기사 문구는 우리의 가슴마저 후련하게 해 주는 것 같습니다.

독도의 문제는 단순한 영토 문제가 아니며 우리 민족의 가슴 속 깊이 간직된 뭉클한 그 무엇에 대한 문제입니다. 36년 동안 일본에 수모를 당한 “한 많은 우리 민족”의 “한”을 나타내는 문제일 수도 있고, 그것을 초월하는 그 무엇일 수도 있습니다.

이제 우리는 더 이상 과거와 같이 당하지 않습니다. 일본의 만행에 가까운 억측 주장은 우리 민족은 물론 전 세계가 좌시하지 않을 것입니다.

처음에는 소수의 국민들이 움직였습니다. 그리고 모든 국민이 하나가 되어 움직였습니다. 이제는 세계가 움직이고 있습니다. 일본은 국제사회의 우스개거리로 전락하기 전에 하루 빨리 헛된 망상에서 벗어나야 할 것입니다.

아래는 뉴욕타임즈 기사의 원문입니다. 다음 번에는 어느 나라의 어느 신문에서 이러한 기사가 나올 지 기대됩니다.

DOKDO, South Korea — Each day, weather permitting, hundreds of South Koreans sail to this cluster of nearly uninhabitable islets and outcroppings, seven seasick hours from the Korean mainland.

The waves are so unpredictable that only a little more than half of the visitors can land. When they do, it is for a 20-minute stay to snap photos from a wharf, the largest flat surface on this 46-acre collection of two main islets and dozens of other specks of land.

The rest of the visitors must content themselves with circling on the ferry, waving South Korean flags and throwing cookie crumbs at the sea gulls flying overhead.

Still, over the past three years, the voyage to these islets, which South Korea administers but Japan claims, has become a popular pilgrimage for Koreans. This year, 80,000 people have set foot here, undeterred by the lack of a souvenir shop, restaurant or public toilet.

“When Japan claims Dokdo as its own territory, we Koreans feel as outraged as if someone pointed at our wife and claimed that she is his own,” said Cho Whan-bok, secretary general of the Northeast Asian History Foundation, a government-affiliated institute established in 2006 to examine territorial and other disputes with neighboring countries.

For outsiders, the dispute over islets that seem to rise vertically from the sea and have little economic value might seem esoteric. But for those Koreans who have never forgiven Japan for its brutal occupation of their country and who continue to measure success against Japanese competitors, the dispute over what the South Koreans call Dokdo and Japan calls Takeshima is very real, and very emotional.

Both countries trace their claim back over centuries. Japan says it reconfirmed its right to Takeshima in 1905, during its war with Russia. For Koreans, however, that was an annexation that marked the prelude to Japan’s colonial rule, from 1910 to 1945, a period during which they were banned from using their language and many women were lured or forced into sexual slavery in front-line brothels for Japan’s Imperial Army.

The postwar peace treaty between a defeated Japan and the Allied powers did not resolve sovereignty over the islets, and since the 1950s, South Korea has maintained a police garrison here. Japan repeatedly urged South Korea to take the issue to the International Court of Justice, and South Korea repeatedly declined, arguing that there was nothing to discuss.

Then, in 2005, members of the prefectural assembly in Shimane, on Japan’s western coast, declared Feb. 22 — the 100th anniversary of the day the Japanese took over the islets — to be Takeshima Day, to highlight the Japanese claim.

Their resolution set off a firestorm in South Korea.

“If the Japanese try to take this island from us, we will fight to the end,” said Kwak Young-hwan, captain of the 5,000-ton Sambong, the South Korean Coast Guard’s largest patrol boat, which prowls the waters around Dokdo. “If we run out of firepower, we will ram our ship against the intruders! Our national pride is at stake.”

The dispute heated up again this year, with the two countries engaging in a tit-for-tat struggle that, at one point, dragged in the United States — an ally of both nations.

In July, the Japanese Ministry of Education issued a new manual for teachers and textbook publishers urging them to instruct Japanese students that the islets rightfully belong to Japan.

South Korea responded by recalling its ambassador to Tokyo for three weeks. South Korean citizens chimed in, with a small group of protesters decapitating pheasants — Japan’s national bird — in front of the Japanese Embassy in central Seoul. The administrators of the Seoul subway system removed a Japanese company’s condom advertisements.

Even North Korea, still technically at war with the South, criticized Japan. Rodong Sinmun, North Korea’s main state-run newspaper, said that Japan’s new educational manual on Dokdo was “a militarist racket for territorial expansion” and that it could “ignite a war around the Korean Peninsula.”

In July, in the midst of the uproar, the United States Board on Geographic Names changed the island’s status from “South Korean” to “undesignated sovereignty,” outraging South Koreans, many of whom saw it as yet another instance of their nation’s fate being arbitrarily decided by a bigger power.

The board insisted that its decision was just technical. But the Bush administration intervened, ordering the board to restore the old designation. The move was well received in Seoul. When President Bush visited this month, after years of tension between the United States and South Korea over North Korean policy, tens of thousands of residents greeted him waving American flags and placards that read “Welcome President Bush!”

Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Nobutaka Machimura, later said, “There is no need for us to overreact to a decision made by just one organization in the United States.”

South Korea’s offensive in the battle for world opinion featured a press trip last week that included a reporter for The New York Times. The government sponsored the voyage, aboard a Coast Guard ship, for journalists working for foreign news organizations.

Among the post-World War II generations of Koreans, a desire to surpass Japan — and fear that they could once again be subjugated by a larger neighbor — remains a powerful driving force.

Mr. Cho of the Northeast Asian History Foundation said, “Even in sports, such as Olympic baseball, South Koreans get twice as happy when they beat Japan as when they defeat, say, the United States.”

In this charged atmosphere, Dokdo, which means “solitary island,” is more than a collection of rocks. South Koreans like to personify it as if it were a sibling or a spouse. A popular modern version of “Arirang,” the song Koreans most associate with their national spirit, begins: “Dokdo, did you sleep well last night?”

“I feel lonely and isolated serving here,” said Kim Eun-taek, 24, a police conscript stationed on Dokdo. “But I feel immensely proud. Not every South Korean gets a chance to guard the easternmost territory of our nation.”

“Besides,” he said, a rifle on his shoulder as he gazed across the sea toward Japan, “I never liked the Japanese.”

Dokdo is not an easy posting. Until a South Korean company recently donated desalinization equipment, the islets had no reliable water supply. There are almost no trees, and winter weather cuts off ferry service for weeks at a stretch.

Although regional security experts say South Korea and Japan have too much at stake to use military means to settle their differences here, the South Korean Coast Guard says that the number of Japanese patrol boats sailing around the islets has increased since the sovereignty issue resurfaced in 2005.

Kim Sung-do, 68, an octopus fisherman, and his wife have lived here for 40 years as Dokdo’s only year-round civilian residents. He said he did not expect the Japanese to invade.

But “if they ever do that,” Mr. Kim said, “I will fight them, even if the only weapons I have are my bare fists.”

In front of his concrete home, at the foot of a bluff, seven South Korean flags whipped in the wind.