Idiot ‘attempts harakiri’ because Japan sends a boat to survey some water.

You probably haven’t heard of the Liancourt Rocks, and if you have, you probably don’t give a shit about them. But let’s pretend that you want to read about them, at least for the sake of laughing at the morons who do.

The Liancourt Rocks are some rocky little islands located somewhere between Korea and Japan in the Sea of Japan. For most of the last few hundred years the rocks have been uninhabited, occasionally visited by Korean or Japanese fishermen and sailors. In January 1905, the Japanese annexed the Liancourt Rocks, incorporating them into Shimane Prefecture as ‘Takeshima’. Prior to 1905 most maps that bothered to show the rocks considered them Korean territory(Since they had been officially declared Korean territory in 1900).

The Japanese didn’t bother telling the Koreans about the annexation, since Korea was a crappy 5th rate nation at the time. The Japanese were in the middle of fighting a war with Russia, which had been attempting to bring Korea under its control. The Russians ended up losing the war and signing the Treaty of Portsmouth in September of 1905, agreeing to hand over Korea to Japan. A month later a few members of the Korean government signed a treaty declaring Korea a protectorate of Japan and officially beginning Japan’s colonial rule over Korea.

Japan was stripped of Administrative control of the Liancourt Rocks in 1945 when the American occupation began, but it has never given up its claim on the islands. Korea also claimed the islands, but it didn’t really matter at the time, since they were just barren rocks with nothing on them.

South Korea changed all that in 1953, when it decided the rocks were so important that they needed to build an outpost there. The Japanese coast guard tried to set up an outpost too but the Koreans drove them away with gunfire and mortars. Since then, Korea has occupied the islands, refusing Japan’s requests for the matter to be settled in international courts(it seems that Korea’s legal claim to the rocks probably won’t hold up).

A year or two ago South Korea went into a national rage when some Japanese textbooks claimed that their occupation of the Liancourt Rocks was illegal. Rather than having an international court determine whether it was illegal, the Koreans decided to hold nationalistic protests, burning Japanese flags and complaining about how evil Japan was 60 years ago. Most pathetic of all, South Korean elementary school children were told to make anti-Japanese hate pictures, denouncing Japan’s claim to the islands.

A couple days ago, Japan decided to send a couple coast guard ships to the waters near the Liancourt Rocks to do some surveying. The Japanese government obviously doesn’t care much about the actual survey results; it is likely an attempt to force the issue’s settlement in an international court. The South Koreans have decided to put their coast guard on alert around the rocks, probably hoping to scare away the Japanese with the threat of violence. In the mean time, Korea citizens have resumed their anti-Japanese rage(did it ever stop?).

One Korean man had a brilliant idea: to protest the Japanese survey ships by killing himself! He decided to kill himself through seppuku, a Japanese method of suicide that would surely shame the Japanese into giving up their claim on the rocks! Sadly, this Korean drama queen didn’t realize that a low quality kitchen knife wouldn’t be enough to do the job. Judging from the picture above, it seems that he also stabbed himself in the incorrect direction. Was he going to commit seppuku by carving his way up? Of course, he survived the ‘suicide attempt’ without life-threatening injuries:

Anti-Japan protester attempts ‘harakiri’

SEOUL: A South Korean protester attempted harakiri (ritual suicide) yesterday amid rising anger over Japan’s decision to launch an ocean survey in disputed waters between the two countries.

Defying South Korean warnings, Tokyo dispatched two ships to the area claimed by both countries, renewing a feud tied to colonial history that has festered for decades.

The South Korean coast guard said 18 patrol ships were deployed around the islets – called Dokdo in South Korea and Takeshima in Japan – with a surveillance plane ready to scramble.

Police said the protester stabbed himelf in the abdomen in what appeared to be a ritual suicide attempt following an anti-Japanese rally in Seoul.

The man was receiving treatment in hospital where his condition was not critical, police said.

Dressed in traditional Korean robes, the middle-aged man wearing a headband depicting the Korean national flag stripped to his waist, knelt down and then planted the blade in his abdomen in front of a monument erected in honour of a 1919 anti-Japanese uprising.

“He was found groaning alone on the ground when a police officer reached the scene,” a police spokesman said. “We heard he was not in critical condition.”

During rallies against Japanese claims to the islands in March last year two South Koreans severed fingers and wrote protest messages in blood. -Gulf News

It’s kind of sad. Most people in Japan probably don’t even know what is going on, nor do they care about whether their country owns the Liancourt Rocks. Japan’s claim to the islands seems to have very little to do with a desire for renewed military expansionism. To a great many South Koreans, Japan’s claim to the islands represents a brutish menace to their national security, and more importantly, to their massively inflated pride. Rather than allow the international courts to settle the matter, South Korea’s government encourages the spread of hatred towards Japan and the Japanese. Lame.

EDIT: Korea has said it will not submit Korean names for the underwater formations near the Liancourt Rocks, so Japan has decided to cancel the surveying mission. The issue has been put on the back burner for the time being.