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103-10/3/51

1 PUSAN

MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS

SEOUL

September 21, 1951

Dear Ambassador Muccio,

This note is to seek to draw your attention to the enclosed exerpt of Memorandum of SCAPIN-677, 29 January 1946, which should be regarded as a conslusive factor in deciding, in Korean favor, the controversy over the ownership of Dokdo, known as "Liancourt Rocks" and also as "Takeshima" in Japanese. The fact that the disputed isle has been put on the Korean side of the MacArthur Line is another manifestation of the SCAP memorandum under notice.

In 1948, if I do not remember wrongly, when air bombing practice caused casualities among the Korean fishermen in boats nestling near the isle, SCAP apologized to this Goverment for the incident. Had SCAP regarded the isle as Japanese territory, the presence of the Koreans there would have been illegal and no apologies necessary. As evidenced by the Memorandum in question, SCAP has, at no time, doubted that the isle belongs or ought to belong, to Korea.

We have substantial documented evidence to prove that the isle has been in the Korean possession for many hundred years. The fact that Japan incorporated the isle into one of its nearby prefectures in 1905 (a deal sneaked on a prefectural level, not on a Governmental level, for the obvious convenience to back down more easily in case of a possible international trouble) cannot repudiate our rightful claims to the isle, supported not merely by Korean documents but by Japanese ones also.

Enclosure: Memorandum of SCAPIN-677, 29 January 1946

His Excellency