Civic group to seek injunction against Japan’s claim over Dokdo

A local civic group said Friday it will seek a court injunction to stop Japan’s recurring territorial claim over Dokdo, the easternmost South Korean islets.

The Dokdo promotion movement solidarity based in the east coastal city of Sokcho, 213 kilometers east of Seoul, said it plans to file for the injunction with a Japanese court on Feb. 22 next year.

If fulfilled as planned, the injunction application will mark the first legal suit filed in a Japanese court by a South Korean civic group.

The local group said it will recruit 1 million fellow complainants to join the lawsuit intended to block Japan‘s interruption of South Korea’s sovereign control of Dokdo that lies about halfway between the two neighbors.

The group will also host two academic seminars to be joined by South Korean as well as Japanese scholars, it said, adding that some Japanese civic groups are planning to take part in the planned lawsuit.

The move comes as South Korea and Japan are facing unusually icy relations over their long-running history issues, including South Korea’s ownership of the outcroppings.

Japan’s Cabinet Office released earlier this month a public survey showing six out of 10 Japanese think Dokdo belongs to Japan.

The survey further pummeled the bilateral relationship, already hurt by a series of nationalistic actions and remarks from Tokyo.

The Dokdo outcroppings, on which South Korea keeps a small police detachment, have been a major source of contention with Japan.

Many South Koreans still resent Japan for its brutal colonial rule over the Korean Peninsula from 1910-45, demanding Tokyo apologize and compensate South Korean victims for its atrocities.

Relations between the two countries have deteriorated further in recent months since the conservative Abe government took office in Japan.

On Thursday, political parties denounced Japan for its reported move to sanction the use of its wartime national flag, the latest in a series of apparent moves to glorify its militaristic past.

The Japanese daily Sankei Shimbun reported Tuesday that the Japanese government is moving to officially recognize the use of the so-called rising-sun flag as “unproblematic.”

“It is a sheer act of disrespect to history that the Japanese government is trying to officially recognize the flag of war criminals, which cannot be justified under any pretext,” Rep. Min Hyun-joo, a spokeswoman of the ruling Saenuri Party, said in a statement.(Yonhap News)