Police lift ranks of top police officers on Ulleung Island and Dokdo

SEOUL, Aug. 3 (Yonhap) -- Police on Wednesday elevated the ranks of the top officers in charge of defending Ulleung Island and the adjacent islets of Dokdo by one notch to better respond to Japan's reoccurring claims to the South Korean territory.
Yoo Dan-hee, a police chief superintendent, who was appointed to head a police detachment on Ulleung Island, said that he and his subordinate officers will now seek a more active role in the defense of the East Sea island in the face of Japan's territorial provocation over Dokdo.



So far, the police detachment on Ulleung Island used to be commanded by a police superintendent, who is one grade lower than Yoo.
Complying with the government's determination to sternly deal with Japan's territorial claims, the National Police Agency (NPA) also appointed four superintendent officers to rotationally head its detachment on Dokdo, which was led by a lieutenant-level officer in the past.
"Security operations on Dokdo should not be confined to the passive boundary of keeping vigilance," said Yoo, who formerly served at a Seoul police station.
"Now is the time to make the security operations more proactive," noted the 54-year-old officer.
"The latest measure is to reaffirm the police's will to protect Dokdo from Japan's territorial claims as manifested in Japanese lawmakers' recent attempts to enter South Korea and the issuance of the 2011 defense paper," a police official said.
Japan's claims to Dokdo have long been a source of diplomatic friction in relations with South Korea as resentment over Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of Korea still runs deep here.
Japan's issuance of its 2011 defense paper on Tuesday, which reasserted its ownership of the islets, spawned fresh anger among the Korean people.