Seoul likely to return Noda letter

Seoul is likely to return Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s letter protesting President Lee Myung-bak’s visit to Dokdo back to Tokyo, according to a Cheong Wa Dae official, Wednesday.

The official said the government has yet to make a decision. “However, we are considering seriously sending the letter back to Japan as an option,” he said.

Presidential aides have discussed with international law experts and professionals in diplomacy how to react to the letter. “We were told that responding to the letter is inappropriate because there are several factual errors in it,” the official said.

Quoting the part reading that President Lee landed on Takeshima, the official said Lee has never visited there. “President Lee made a visit to our territory called Dokdo, not Takeshima. This is one of the factual errors in the letter,” he said.

He said Seoul is looking at the possible consequences of all options in response to the Japanese Prime Minister’s letter.

The presidential office also looked at two other options. It could do nothing to send the message that Seoul is ignoring it, or send a response protesting the claims on South Korea’s easternmost islets.

Park Jeong-ha, a presidential spokesman, told reporters that a discussion is underway and a decision will be made shortly.
Sources said hardliners calling for returning it to Tokyo have gained the upper hand in the presidential office.

Seoul officials felt extremely uncomfortable about the way Japan played politics with the letter.

Last week, the Japanese government handed over the letter to the Korean Embassy in Tokyo and leaked its key contents to Japanese media outlets 30 minutes later, before it was sent to Cheong Wa Dae.

Officials here took this to mean that it tried to use the note for domestic politics, calling the action diplomatically incorrect.

Details of the letter are not known. Sources said the Japanese leader protested Lee’s Dokdo trip and called for an international court ruling on the territory.

It is hard to predict whether Seoul will finally return the letter to Tokyo.

If it rejects receiving it due to “factual errors,” it will be inevitable for tensions to rise further over Seoul-Tokyo ties, which already show signs of entering a cooling off period. <The Korea Times/Kang Hyun-kyung>

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