Teenage U.S. peace activist to become 'PR ambassador' for Dokdo

SEOUL, Sept. 9 (Yonhap) -- An American teenage boy who traveled to North Korea last year with his parents on a peace mission will assume a new role for South Korea as a "PR ambassador" tasked with promoting the image of the South's easternmost islets of Dokdo, his father said Friday.
Jonathan Lee, 14, who lives in Mississippi, will be appointed to the post on Wednesday by the South Gyeongsang provincial government, which has jurisdiction over the volcanic outcroppings that have long been a thorn in relations between South Korea and Japan.
"Jonathan is pleased to take on the role to advertise the Korean territory of Dokdo worldwide," his father Lee Kyoung-tae, born and raised in South Korea, told Yonhap News Agency by telephone.
The 14-year-old also showed his "deep interest" in protecting the maritime environment near Dokdo, his father said.
Jonathan plans to visit South Gyeongsang Province next week to receive a letter of appointment and tour Dokdo and the nearby island of Ulleung, he said.



The boy, who founded a group called "The International Cooperation of Environmental Youth -- Helping Our Polluted Earth," wrote on the group's website that his idea of promoting peace on the Korean Peninsula was inspired by former South Korean leader Kim Dae-jung, who died in 2009.
Japan's attempt to lay claim to Dokdo has long been a source of diplomatic tensions with South Korea, which sees those claims as a sign that Japan has not fully repented for its 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. South Korea has rejected Japan's claims over Dokdo as nonsense because the country reclaimed sovereignty over its territory, including Dokdo and many other islands around the Korean Peninsula, when it regained independence.
kdh@yna.co.kr
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