Recent bouts of vandalism in the U.S. aimed at claiming Japan’s sovereignty over the islets of Dokdo in East Sea have prompted an uproar in the Korean community there.

A white wooden stake was founded Saturday at the entrance of Seoul’s consulate general in Manhattan in New York, officials said. It reads “Takeshima is Japanese Territory,” referring to Japanese name of the outcrops.

A day earlier, a sticker with the same note was discovered near the signboard of the office’s petition room.

A similar pole was also removed Friday by the Korean American Civic Empowerment, a U.S.-based civic group, from beside a monument at a public park in New Jersey that commemorates Korean women forced into sexual slavery by Japanese troops during World War II. The memorial, a brass plaque on a piece of stone, was installed in 2010 at Palisades Park in front of a municipal library in the city. 

Local police have launched an investigation into the incidents after receiving reports from the diplomatic missions, according to the New York consulate.

“The posts, as well as the sticker, were immediately reported to the police. We’ve also requested the police track down the culprit and strengthen vigilance in the neighborhood,” Jun Sung-oh, the mission’s public relations officer, told Yonhap News.

Korean civic groups there suspect a Japanese harboring anti-Korean sentiment or a group of nationalists with similar backgrounds had carried out the acts, given the nature of the incidents and similar appearances of the stakes.

“The stake was attached here, damaging the flowers next to the monument. I was so angry when I saw the message written on it. If I saw the person who did this, I wouldn’t have let him get away with what he did,” said Yoon Geum-jong, a member of a veterans’ group, in New Jersey.

U.S. authorities vowed a fact-finding mission.

“An event that turns into some sort of racist crime or some sort of biased crime, there would be investigation going on, and the perpetrator or perpetrators will be prosecuted in the event that turns out to be true,” Palisades Park Mayor James Rotundo told media.

The vandalism mirrors events in mid-June in Seoul when a right-wing Japanese activist left a wooden post in front of the War and Women’s Human Rights Museum and beside a bronze statue of a young girl before the Japanese Embassy. The sculpture symbolizes so-called comfort women and was erected by former victims and their supporters.

Japan illegally incorporated the islets in 1905 in the run up to its full-fledged occupation of the Korean Peninsula. Seoul regained them after its 1945 independence and mobilizes a small batch of coast guards there.

Tokyo has for decades insisted sovereignty over Dokdo via school textbooks, diplomatic and defense papers and other methods. The claim, together with the country’s repeated distortion of historical facts and failure to apologize for sex slavery and forced labor during World War II, has sparked anti-Japan protests across Korea.

By Shin Hyon-hee (heeshin@heraldcorp.com)