Recently I've found myself really interested in the history of the Liancourt Rocks. The Liancourt Rocks are a small group of islands more or less halfway between South Korea and Japan. The Liancourt Rocks are named after a French ship named Le Liancourt, but is known to Koreans as Dokdo 독도 （獨島）, literally meaning "solitary island" whereas it is known to the Japanese as Takeshima 竹島, literally meaning "bamboo island." The issue of who the islands belong to is still under dispute, but they are currently administered by South Korea.
I am neither Korean nor Japanese, and my interest towards this topic is purely intellectual. I am not an expert on history, and I'm far from even being an amateur historian. I've been looking on the web for information on the history of the Liancourt Rocks, so that I can decide for myself which country these islands belong to. However most of the information are written by either Koreans or Japanese, who on the most part are equally biased towards the other party. I still haven't found much information from third party sources.
I have read this blog from an American (I think he's American), and basically the problem is complicated by the fact that historical records of both Korea and Japan don't have a clear naming system for the islands between them. For example from what I've gathered, Korea and Japan refer to a place called 竹島, pronounced jukdo 죽도 in Korean and takeshima たけしま in Japanese. So in this instance it's unclear whether the takeshima the Japanese are referring to today is the same place as the Korean Dokdo, or to a completely different island called jukdo. This is of course is my simplified interpretation of what I've read.
Another complicating factor is that historical records of Korean or Japanese contact with the islands, as well as description of the islands itself and it's relation to other nearby islands, is that it is written in Classical Chinese. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Classical Chinese is far from being a standardized script. The way you read it is pretty much completely up to the person reading it. Not surprisingly, the Koreans and the Japanese interpret these records for their own benefit.
This issue is complicated, and so I don't think I'll be reaching a conclusion anytime soon.
The only conclusion I've reached today, is that I want to learn Classical Chinese... but that I have to stop myself! That's not for at least another 10 years. Good thing I bought A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese when I was in Japan.
This online dictionary very useful because you can search the Korean equivalents of words in English, Chinese, Japanese and vice-versa.
Mandarin, a stream of syllables with meaning
13 years ago
