KCHEFNE’s question,:
Please write us a brief summary of what you have felt and learned while participating in this essay competition.

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I am very happy to participate in this competition, as it was a great opportunity for me to learn important history and information I should definitely know. I tried my best to write an unbiased essay including reliable sources and information.

Growing up as a Korean, the fact that Dokdo is Korea’s territory was something that I had heard of multiple times. Yet, I didn’t exactly know the long history behind the island and the East Sea, and I had always wanted to learn more about those topics. A good opportunity for that came while looking through the articles and websites about Dokdo with my brother to help him with his Korean School homework, I found a webpage announcing the “7th Annual Dokdo and East Sea History Essay Competition.”

As I read through the details, I felt that participating in the competition would give me a nice chance for me to learn deeply about Dokdo and the East Sea. So, I started to conduct some research about the topics and condense all the information into my essay.

During that process, I learned a lot of detailed facts about Dokdo and the East Sea. Two examples of that would be that historical documents such as Samguk Sagi, the Annals of King Sejong’s Reign, and the Dajōkan order prove Korea’s Sovereignty over Dokdo and that the East Sea is the name of the sea area that was used for the longest amount of time.

These details gave me a lot of different emotions—sadness for the dark history related to Dokdo and the East Sea, thankfulness for the work of numerous Koreans to raise awareness for the issues, and inspiration to put in some effort myself to let more people know the truth about Dokdo and the East Sea.

Overall, participating in this essay competition was a wonderful experience that taught me important information that I should definitely know as a Korean citizen.
I hope this experience would be the initiating point for me to learn more about Dokdo and the East Sea in the future and also to my work to inform more people about the issue.