Youths begin global tour to promote Korean ownership of Dokdo

By Kim Ye Ran
SEOUL, Aug. 14 (Yonhap) -- Six Korean youths have embarked on a year-long global
tour to promote South Korea's historic ownership of the Dokdo islets in the East
Sea.

The group, operating under the title "Dokdo-racer" will tour 30 countries and 50
cities, beginning with the San Francisco in the United States.
Formed in December 2008 by five students of Seoul National University (SNU) and a
26-year-old physical education teacher who quit his job to join the tour, the six
plan to visit local universities and Korean communities in foreign countries to
educate people about the history of Korea's ownership of Dokdo.
Japan regularly includes Dokdo as Japanese territory in its annual defense white
paper, under the name Takeshima. South Korea claims according to history,
geography and international law that the islets are Korean.
"Dokdo belongs to Korea, and Korean people live there. But Japan claims that the
island is its territory," said the determined leader of Dokdo-racer Han Sang-yeop
Thursday.
"Japan is trying to present the island as disputed territory. So international
society may mistakenly perceive it as disputed territory between Korea and
Japan. We just couldn't sit and watch the world accept this as the truth. So we
decided to take action.
"We have two goals during our journey. The first goal is to inform foreigners of
why the island belongs to Korea. The second goal is to draw more attention from
other Korean youths to this matter," added Bae Sung-hwan, who is in charge of
public relations.
To come this far, however, Dokdo-racer have had to overcome a lot of
difficulties. Before starting this overseas tour they made a domestic tour on
bicycles from Seoul to Dokdo. But they faced a tragedy when their youngest
member, Kim Do-gun, 20, died in a car accident. He was hit by a drunken driver
when the finish line was just 30 km away.
Finding financial sponsors for their year-long journey abroad was not easy,
either. "Private companies were reluctant to support us and it took much effort
to persuade them that the tour was worth it. Now we have quite a few sponsors
and have received all kinds of support from them," said Bae.
For the past months, members of Dokdo-racer lodged together to prepare for their
journey. "Every Sunday, we would hold a meeting and decide on the coming week's
schedule. And then from Monday through Friday, we worked out to stay in shape
and studied about Dokdo.
"We visited various Dokdo-related agencies to receive more information about the
island and met with experts. We also practiced Samulnori (traditional Korean
percussion quartet) and Taekwondo (Korea's traditional martial art) since we
plan to perform them to draw people's attention on the streets when we are
abroad."
Dokdo-racer will tour North and South America for six months and fly over to
Australia. Afterwards, they will walk in African countries and hold a month-long
campaign in South Africa when it holds the 2010 World Cup soccer finals. And
then, after spending another month in Europe, they will return to Korea.
yerankim@yna.co.kr
(END)