편집자 주     본지에서는 전세계 외국인 독자들을 대상으로 한국의 역사와 문화를 정확하게 소개하기 위해 김정기 변호사의 칼럼을 영문판으로 연재를 시작합니다.

한국의 역사와 문화에 관심있는 전 세계인들에게 도움이 되길 바랍니다.

한국어 독자들은 한국어로 번역된 화면이 보이므로 반드시 사이트 상단에서 원문보기로 설정하셔야 영문판으로 보실수 있습니다.

 
 

<김정기 변호사 걸어온 길>

 
[학력]
● 뉴욕주립대(Stony Brook) 정치학과 수석졸업 (BA--Summa Cum Laude)
● 마케트대(Marquette) 로스쿨 법학박사 (Doctor of Jurisprudence )
● 하버드대(Harvard) 케네디스쿨 최고위과정 (Senior Executive Program)
● 베이징대(Peking) 북한학 연구학자 (Research Scholar)
 

[주요 경력]
● 제8대 주상하이 대한민국 총영사(13등급 대사)
● 2010 상하이엑스포 대한민국관 정부대표
● 아시아태평양지방정부네트워크(CityNet) 사무국 대표
● 미국 밀워키지방법원 재판연구원
● 법무법인 대륙아주 중국 총괄 미국변호사
● 국민대 정치대학원 국제관계학 특임교수
● 경희대 테크노경영대학원 협상학 객원교수
● 동국대 경영전문대학원 석좌교수
● 난징대 국제경제연구소 객좌교수
● 베이징대 동방학연구원 연구교수
● 숭실사이버대 초대 총장

 
[저서]
● 대한민국과 세계 이야기(책미듬)
● 한국형 협상의 법칙(청년정신)
● 나는 1%의 가능성에 도전한다(조선일보)
● 밀리언셀러 '대학생을 위한 거로영어시리즈'[전10권]   (거로출판)

(Newskorea=Seoul) Digital News Team = <Korea Story 6 by Atty Jeong-kee Kim>

● Forgotten Land, Gando; Land to be Protected, Dokdo

They are so far away.
As if stars are precariously distant,
Mother,
And you are in faraway North Gando.
I miss something
So I write my name
On the hill bathed in starlight,
And cover it with dirt.
It’s why insects cry through the night,
Sad for their shameful names.

- From Yun Dong-ju's "Counting the Stars at Night"

In the poem ‘Counting the Stars at night’ by Yun Dong-ju, a resistance poet against the Japanese colonial rule,  Bukgando(North Gando) is mentioned as ‘the land where the mother resides’. Bukgando is the hometown of poet Yoon. Names like Yongjeong, Hunchun, and Jilin in the Gando region are familiar to us. Gando was the base of our people's Independence Movement under Japanese colonial rule, and it is now our northern territory where Joseonjok(Korean Chinese) live.

What kind of land is Gando, the forgotten land? This area, which has been considered a land that has nothing to do with us and was unfamiliar to us, is our old land north of the Yalu River and Duman River, which are now Chinese territory. The land north of the Yalu River and Duman River, which we know as Manchuria, is the birthplace of our people and was the territory of Gojoseon, Goguryeo, and Balhae. However, this land was not always ours; it was a disputed territory with the Qing Dynasty until the late Joseon period and was known as Gando, a land we developed and exercised de facto control over.

However, now it is perceived as distant and unfamiliar to the people as it was in the past, to the point where people wonder, ‘Was that land our land?’ Why did the current result occur? There is reason why the region was relatively excluded from attention due to the separation between the North and the South, but it can also be seen as a result of the Korean government's neglectful attitude toward the North and the resulting lack of general territorial awareness among the people.

The land of Gando north of the Yalu and Tumen rivers, once Goguryeo territory, effectively belonged to no one after the Qing Dynasty declared it a restricted area as the birthplace of their ancestors. Western maps of the 18th and 19th centuries mostly depicted this area as a prohibited zone, belonging to neither China nor Korea. However, Koreans continued to cross the rivers into Gando, established settlements and administrative control by the late 19th century, and maintained effective governance. In response, the Qing Dynasty felt the need to clearly demarcate the border and, in 1712, during King Sukjong's reign, it erected the "Baekdu Mountain Border Stone" with Joseon.
    
The stone marker erected by the Qing Dynasty and Joseon, though primarily by the Qing, inscribed "To the west, Yalu; to the east, Tomun." This meant that the border was set along the Yalu River to the west and the Tomun River to the east. The Tomun River mentioned here is a tributary of the Songhua River flowing north from the Tianchi (Heavenly Lake) on Baekdu Mountain. If the Baekdu Mountain Border Stone is correct, the current Yanbian region, i.e., Northeast China, should belong to Korea. The fact that the Qing erected this stone means that even China acknowledged Gando as Korean territory.
 
The issue resurfaced when it was revealed that the Tomun River mentioned in the border stone inscription was not the Tumen River (Domun River) but another river, a tributary of the Songhua River. In the 19th century, although the Qing government had restricted access to the Manchurian region, many Chinese and Koreans still settled there in large numbers. In 1883, the Qing declared they would expel the Koreans living in the region west and north of the Tomun River to enforce the restricted area. However, Koreans who did not want to leave discovered that the Tomun River recorded by Mukgudeng on the border stone was a different river entirely from the Tumen River.
   
However, the Chinese side changed their stance, claiming that "Tomun" in Manchu means the same as "Tumen," arguing that the inscription on the border stone indicating "west Yalu, east Tomun" meant "west Yalu, east Tumen," thus claiming Gando as Chinese territory. Joseon did not let this issue go either.

Due to this issue, Joseon and the Qing Dynasty held border negotiations called 'restriction negotiations' on two occasions, but the negotiations between the two sides surrounding the Gando region failed to narrow down their differences, and the international situation such as the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War continued. It was halted due to upheaval.

After winning the Russo-Japanese War, Japan forced King Gojong to sign the so-called "Eulsa Treaty," and stripped Joseon of its diplomatic rights. Japan committed various atrocities to annex Joseon and extended its reach into Manchuria for its imperial ambitions. They conducted extensive investigations with experts, 
and, under the guise of protecting over 100,000 Koreans, established the Japanese Residency-General's Police Box in Yongjeong. This location later became infamous as a key base for suppressing the Korean Independence Movement. Japan's subsequent actions included claiming Gando as Korean territory, but this was merely an excuse to invade the continent more easily. Japan signed a treaty with the Qing to acquire railway construction rights in Manchuria, Fushun coal mining rights, and ceded Gando to the Qing.
    
With the Eulsa Treaty, Joseon lost its diplomatic rights, and Japan took over Joseon's foreign affairs, leading to the loss of the Gando region without any resistance. When Korea-Japan relations were normalized in 1965, Japan declared all treaties signed on behalf of Korea during the Japanese occupation invalid. Thus, the Gando Agreement should also be nullified, making Gando our territory. However, realistically, in the divided Korea, reclaiming Gando from China seemed impossible.
 
However, after the establishment of diplomatic ties between Korea and China in 1992, negotiations with China became more active, and the issue of Gando sovereignty arose. Perhaps, if the Korean Peninsula had not been divided, regaining the lost land of Gando might not have been as difficult as it is now. The Gando Agreement, concluded under the Eulsa Treaty, which is void under international law, is naturally without legal effect. Accordingly, we must notify China of the invalidity of the Gando Agreement and make practical efforts to reclaim the Gando land. However, China distorted history in the name of the Northeast Project and tried to solidify its sovereignty over Gando.

The period within which objections to treaties between nations can be raised is "within 100 years of the treaty signing," but we missed the opportunity by not taking action by 2009. We must now seriously discuss the northern territorial issue with China and consider legal resolution through international bodies like the International Court of Justice. Until now, our government has not informed China that the Gando Agreement, signed between Qing and Japan, is invalid under international law, nor declared our territorial rights over the Gando region. Consequently, no foreign scholar has mentioned Gando as a territorial issue while discussing Northeast Asian cooperation or security at various international meetings. Whose responsibility is this? It’s because we ignored the importance of the Gando territorial rights and treated it as if it never existed. Therefore, we must clearly assert our territorial rights over Gando.
  
In China, as part of the Northeast Project, efforts are underway to incorporate the history of Goguryeo and Balhae into their history to prepare for potential Korean unification. They are taking measures to prevent Goguryeo's history from being recognized as Korean by blocking North Korea’s efforts to register it as a World Cultural Heritage site. Furthermore, they are thoroughly educating and preparing, even indoctrinating the ethnic Koreans in Yanbian to have pride as Chinese citizens, making them recognize China as their homeland and Korea as their motherland. In comparison, what are we doing now?
   
The size of Gando that we will reclaim is more than half the size of South Korea. Our government and people are showing great interest in Dokdo, a small island, due to their long-standing feelings with Japan, but are taking a passive stance on the Gando area, which is 1,000 times larger than Dokdo. The Dokdo sovereignty dispute originated from a notification that had no international legal effect and was issued by the government of a Japanese prefecture (equivalent to a county in Korea) in 1905 (Meiji 38), the so-called ‘Shimane Prefecture Notice’. will be. The main contents of this notice are as follows.
“The uninhabited island (i.e. Dokdo), located at 37 degrees 9 minutes 30 seconds north latitude, 137 degrees 55 minutes east longitude, 85 nautical miles (157 km) from Oki Island, is not within Japanese territory because there are no traces of Japan occupying it. It was incorporated and named Takeshima, and placed under the jurisdiction of Shimane Prefecture Okido Temple .”
This notice was nothing more than a unilateral notification by Japan, which had colonized Korea, of the fact that it had annexed Dokdo to Japan in 1906, the following year, when it visited Sim Hong-taek, then the mayor of Ulleung-gun. In other words, it can be seen that the Dokdo issue was forced by Japan from beginning to end.

Nevertheless, Japan has sent documents asserting territorial rights over Dokdo to the Korean government every year. Japan continues to send diplomatic documents despite repeated protests from the Korean people and government to stop the statute of limitations. Most domestic historians and territorial experts believe that the government's and the people's perception of the Gando territorial issue as unrealistic has even prevented the establishment of a basis for asserting Gando territorial rights. If the indifferent attitude towards the Gando territorial issue is considered appropriate, we should reflect on how to view Japan's repeated claims over Dokdo at every opportunity.

While our government's position on Dokdo as South Korean territory is firm historically and under international law, if Japan continues to assert sovereignty over Dokdo, we must assert our sovereignty in response. Japan's intention to sow seeds of international recognition of Dokdo as a disputed area requires us to strengthen effective occupation of Dokdo quietly. In fact, Dokdo is our territory effectively occupied by South Korea, which cannot be a subject of diplomatic negotiation. Therefore, the best way to firmly establish sovereignty over Dokdo is to continue peaceful and effective governance, which will eventually eliminate Japan's objections to Dokdo's sovereignty.
 
Effective governance requires continuous and peaceful exercise of national authority. To prevent external perception of Dokdo as a disputed area, we must focus on managing it effectively. Territorial issues are highly nationalistic and likely to cause emotional explosions when raised by Japan. Koreans should find ways to calm emotions and silence Japan to develop more constructive relations between Korea and Japan. In this context, we should also assert our government-led territorial claims over Gando to China.

In general, territorial disputes between very important countries are rarely resolved peacefully, and the time taken is very long. Moreover, since the Gando region is an area where very important interests of both countries intersect, it will not be easy to resolve the Gando sovereignty dispute peacefully. Therefore, the first thing to do with regard to the Gando area currently occupied by China is to cut off the statute of limitations on China's occupation by declaring the Gando Agreement invalid.

Thus, our government must inform the public about the importance of Gando and persistently assert to the Chinese government our sovereignty over Gando while consistently sending diplomatic documents asserting Gando's sovereignty. If China does not comply, we should consider the process of going to the International Court of Justice, keeping in mind that the government and the people must strongly maintain awareness and determination regarding the issue of Gando's sovereignty.
    
Currently, most of Korean people do not even know what Gando is, so it is more important than anything to raise interest in Gando and gather strength through national publicity. The more proactive attitude we must take is now clear.
 

☆ Author:  Atty Jeong-kee Kim ☆

[Education]
- Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, Summa Cum Laude, State University of New York at Stony Brook
-  Doctor of Jurisprudence, Marquette University Law School
- Senior Executive Program, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
- Research Scholar in North Korean Studies, Peking University

[Experience]
- Consul General of the Republic of Korea in Shanghai
- Commissioner General for the Korean Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo
- CEO of the Asia-Pacific Local Government Network for Economic and Social Development (CityNet)
- Law Clerk, Milwaukee Circuit Court, USA
- Senior Attorney-at-Law, Dr & Aju LLC
- Distinguished Professor, Graduate School of Political Science, Kookmin University
- Chair Professor, Graduate School of Business, Dongguk University
- Distinguished Visiting Professor, World Economy Research Institute, Nanjing University
- Research Professor, Institute of Oriental Studies, Peking University 
- First President of Soongsil Cyber University

[Publications]
- Georo English Studies Series for College Students [10 volumes] (Georo Publishing)
- I Challenge the Possibility of One Percent (Chosun Ilbo)
- The Art of Negotiation (Cheongnyonneongsin Publishing)
- Korea and the World (Chekmidum Publishing)