Chatter - Breaking news - and good news at that - for South Korea! It appears that the U.S. Board on Geographic Names has reinstated South Korea’s sovereignty over the Dokdo islets:

A U.S. government naming agency has reversed its decision over the sovereignty of the remote South Korean islets of Dokdo, redefining the islets as South Korean one week after having recategorized them as being of “undesignated sovereignty” to reflect Japan’s claim.

The Web site of the Board on Geographic Names (BGN) reinstated South Korea’s sovereignty early Thursday morning (Korean Standard Time), just hours after U.S. President George W. Bush ordered that recognition of South Korea’s sovereignty over Dokdo be restored in the BGN’s database.

“I asked Condi Rice to review it, and the database will be restored (to) where it was seven days ago,” Bush said in a joint interview with reporters from South Korea, China and Thailand just days before his departure on a tour of the three Asian nations.

Click here for the full article. It amazes me that this is such a big news story here. Why does South Korea need the validity of America’s BGN to feel secure about their ownership of the islets? It’s pretty clear to me that the Dokdo islets belong to South Korea - at the moment.

This is a big win for South Korea and a huge blow to Japanese territorial claims over the island. One does have to wonder if this does, indeed, reflect a shift in our foreign policy concerning the islands. Prior administrations have favored complete neutrality on the issue. Despite this, the U.S. maintains that its position on the islets is a neutral one.