Abstract:
Seokwoo Lee is Visiting Scholar, East Asian Legal Studies Program (EALS), Harvard Law School; The Wai Seng
Senior Research Scholar, Asian Studies Centre, St. Antony's College, University of Oxford; D.Phil. in
Public International Law, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford; LL.B., LL.M. in Public International Law,
Korea University Department of Law; LL.M., University of Minnesota Law School; LL.M. in International
Legal Studies, New York University School of Law. Abstract: There are currently three territorial disputes over islands in East Asia in
which Japan is a disputant: against Russia, over the Kurile Islands; against China and
Taiwan, over the Senkaku Islands; and against Korea, over the Liancourt Rocks.
Although all the claimants marshal support for their cases from historical sources, it
cannot be denied that much of the uncertainty surrounding the territorial demarcation is a
by-product of immediate post-World War II boundary decisions and territorial
dispositions. The final disposition of territories tr East Asia at the end of World War II
was effected by the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951. The San Francisco Peace
Treaty failed to define the "Kurile Islands," and further to specify the entity in whose
favor Japan had renounced sovereignty over the disputed islands. Additionally, specific
mention of the Senkaku Islands and the Liancourt Rocks did not appear in the territorial
clauses of the San Francisco Peace Treaty. Accordingly, there is a need for a careful
examination of how a series of drafts of the Treaty defined the terms of the San Francisco
Peace Treaty regarding these disputed islands in East Asia. The territorial clause of the
San Francisco Peace Treaty regarding the Kurile Islands can be interpreted as follows:
first, the Soviet Union is the only recipient of the Kurile Islands envisaged by the Allied
Powers; second, there were no agreed definitions of the "Kurile Islands" among the
Allied Powers; and third, there are strong indications that the Allied Powers preferred not
to resolve the matter of the ultimate disposition of the Kurile Islands in the San Francisco
Peace Treaty. The Senkaku Islands were not included as either Chinese and Taiwanese
or Japanese territory by the drafters of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, and Article 3 of
the San Francisco Peace Treaty did not, to the point of specificity, define the territories
that were placed within the area of the United Nations trusteeship with the United States
as the sole administering authority. The territorial clause on the Liancourt Rocks could
indicate that the San Francisco Peace Treaty assigns the Liancourt Rocks to Japan.
However, due to the contradictory nature of the various drafts of the treaty, Korea may
still be free to establish that the "Korea" renounced in the San Francisco Peace Treaty
included the Liancourt Rocks.
