Can International Law Help Resolve the Conflicts Over Uninhabited Islands in the East China Sea

Abstract

This article focuses on comparable disputes over two groups of uninhabited islands—the Dokdo (Takeshima in Japanese) Islands and the Diaoyu (Senkaku in Japanese) Islands—that may be pivotal to unraveling a series of volatile maritime disputes between Japan and South Korea, on the one hand, and Japan and China, on the other. The Dokdo/Takeshima and Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands are located respectively in the Sea of Japan (known as the East Sea in Korea) and the East China Sea. This narrowing of the topic to these two particular island disputes and related maritime issues is offered in the hope that these two sets of disputes may hold some keys to the wider, more factually complex debate stretching across the region, both north to the Yellow Sea and south to the South China Sea.5 At the same time, there is hope the Japan-South Korea dispute may inform options available for the China-Japan dispute. In the face of the current impasse, the challenge is to identify those aspects of these island disputes that can be solved so as to ultimately facilitate more comprehensive maritime solutions that may be achieved under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea