Posts that South Korea 'gave up claims over disputed islands' misrepresent news reports

"Gosh... unbelievable... I heard Dokdo was sold... seriously, what's going on?" reads a Korean-language Facebook post shared on October 30.

South Korea and its former colonial ruler Japan have a long-standing territorial dispute over small rocky islands off South Korea's eastern coast, known as Dokdo in Korean and Takeshima in Japanese.

The islands have been administered by South Korea since 1945, when Japan surrendered at the end of World War II.

The Facebook post shows screenshots of news reports from Korean broadcaster MBC, alongside a post on X, formerly Twitter, that says: "It seems the reality of Dokdo being taken away has become real."

"The next step is the withdrawal of the (South Korean) police forces guarding Dokdo. Once the island becomes uninhabited, Japan's ships will probably patrol it under the pretext of surveillance."

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Screenshot of a misleading Facebook post taken November 9, 2023

Facebook pages with hundreds of thousands of followers, including here, here, here and here, have also said Seoul had given up its claims over the disputed islands.

"Improving relations"

However, South Korea's foreign affairs ministry said on November 10 there had been no recent changes in the country's territorial claim over the island chain.

"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is firmly exercising strong territorial sovereignty over Dokdo, based on the indisputable position that Dokdo is our inherent territory as established by historical, geographical and international legal considerations," a ministry spokesperson told AFP.

The claim surfaced after a series of policy decisions by the administration of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol widely perceived as dovish towards Tokyo. These include its handling of controversial issues such as Japan's forced wartime labour and Fukushima wastewater release.

Since 2015, the legislative council of the country's North Gyeongsang Province held a council meeting and a rally on the islands every four years in a show of determination to defend sovereignty over them.

But only a few days prior to this year's event, the council -- whose majority is held by ruling party politicians -- scrapped the rally and moved the meeting to a different location. The council chairman told MBC the decision was made based on the "rapidly improving ties" between Seoul and Tokyo (archived here and here).

MBC reports

The screenshots of news reports from MBC were taken from broadcasts that aired on June 13, 2023 and October 26, 2021 (archived here and here).

While both reports covered matters related to the islands -- with the former about the cancelled rally and the latter about proposals to designate Dokdo Day, observed on October 25 as a national day -- neither mention any changes in the islands' sovereignty.

Below are screenshot comparisons of a Facebook post containing the misleading claim (left) and the original footage from the MBC news reports (right):

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Image comparing the photos in a misleading Facebook post (left) with the screenshots of MBC news reports (right)

MBC, a major broadcaster in South Korea that is widely viewed as liberal, is regularly targeted by misinformation shared on pages largely followed by supporters of Yoon's government.

Widely-shared Facebook posts have falsely claimed the broadcaster launched an appeal for donations for Hamas and that it gave a platform to a feminist activist who called men "primitive".