The last registered resident of Dokdo, South Korea’s easternmost islets, has died, leaving the outpost without a legal resident for the first time since the 1960s.
According to Ulleung-gun in North Gyeongsang Province on Tuesday, Kim Shin-yeol died last week at the age of 88.
A former haenyeo, or female free-diver who harvests seafood, from Jeju Island, she had been registered as a resident of the islets since moving there in 1991 to join her husband, Kim Sung-do.
Kim Sung-do had lived on the islets since 1970, working as a fisher. After he died in 2018, she became the sole registered resident of Dokdo.
Kim stayed on the islets for dozens of days in 2019 and 2020. However, after the residential facility for inhabitants was destroyed by Typhoon Haishen in 2020, she moved to her daughter’s home on the mainland.
Dokdo has been continuously inhabited since fisher Choi Jong-deok began living there in 1965 and registered as a resident in 1981. Kim Shin-yeol’s death marks the first time no residents are legally registered on the islets.
Currently, around 30 personnel from the Dokdo Security Police unit under the South Korean police and Ulleung-gun officials stay on the islets, but they are not registered residents.
Kim Shin-yeol’s actions, including casting votes in elections from the islets, had been viewed as demonstrating South Korea’s effective control over Dokdo. Despite this, Ulleung-gun has not allowed her daughter and son-in-law to be registered as islet residents.
“As it has not been long since she passed away, we are not in a position to take immediate action. We will decide in consultation with North Gyeongsang Province,” an Ulleung-gun official told local media.
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