Youths go global tour to promote Dokdo

Six Korean youths have embarked on a year-long global tour to promote Korea`s historic ownership of the Dokdo islets in the East Sea, according to Yonhap News.

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. 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.



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.