Liancourt? Takeshima? No, Bitch, I Love Dokdo.

Just as I was departing for Hawaii there was an outbreak of panic as the most serious foreign policy problem facing the Korean peninsula came to a head: the perceived status of the Liancourt Islands to the United States of America was changed to "contested". Oh the drama! I'm always tempted to mock countries when they fight about useless rocks but now that I have a fairly firm grounding in international law I understand why it matters. On the other hand, I don't think that those are the reasons that any generic citizen from any country gets worked up about such issues[1]. Actually, it's fairly instructive that Wikipedia refers to them as Liancourt Rocks.

A coworker informed us that he recently saw a (facetious) list of ways to make friends in Korea and among the suggestions was to call the Dokdo Islands "Takeshima" and to call kimchi "kimuchi". Both are references to the long-standing bitterness that Korea holds for Japan because of that whole colonization thing[2]. Takeshima is the name for the islands given by Japan and "kimuchi" is the Japanese pronunciation because all but a single consonant sound is followed by a vowel sound in Japanese, in contrast to Korean.

Another coworker, who I appreciate more every week, found these socks referencing the recent flurry of patriotism and got me a pair. The are my very first foreign policy socks.



[1]And when such things come up I always hear Eddie Izzard in Dressed to Kill doing an impression of Britain insisting it needs to keep the Falkland Islands.
It doesn't come up til the last 30 seconds but it's worth the wait:

[2]I'm the first to admit that many of Japan's actions in Korea as an occupying nation were horrendous. I still have not brought myself to read The Rape of Nanjing, even though I purchased it, because I know it will give me nightmares. On the other hand, we occasionally see our first graders, formless, innocent humans, writing about destroying Japan. It has to stop somewhere and raising children to despise a country, wherein virtually no one capable of being involved in Japan's occupation of the mainland of Asia is still alive, seems absurd.