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With the death of Kim Sin-yeol, Dokdo may have said goodbye to its last Korean resident — ever

Published: 11 Mar. 2026, 17:28 Updated: 11 Mar. 2026, 18:26

The late Kim Sin-yeol, center, the only resident of Dokdo, poses for a commemorative photo with her daughter, son-in-law, grandson and granddaughter at the residents’ quarters on Seodo in Dokdo-ri, Ulleung-eup, Ulleung County, North Gyeongsang. A photo of her late husband Kim Sung-do hangs behind her. [YONHAP]

With the death of Kim Sin-yeol, the last person with an address registered to Dokdo, on March 2, the islets now have no official residents.

Kim died at the age of 88 from age-related ailments while staying at her daughter's home in Pohang, North Gyeongsang, some six decades after she moved to the islets with her late husband, Kim Sung-do, who was known as the “village head of Dokdo,” had lived on the islets since the late 1960s.

Kim Sin-yeol took on the role after her husband died in 2018, remaining alone on the island where the couple had long made a living by fishing. But she moved back to the mainland in 2020 after Typhoon Haishen damaged her residence. The structure was restored in 2021, but Kim was unable to return because her chronic illnesses worsened.

Even after all official residents had left Dokdo, many others sought to register their addresses there, but legal and administrative barriers stymied requests.

Kim’s daughter and other family members were no exception. After Kim's husband died, her daughter and son-in-law tried to register as residents of the government-run Dokdo Residential Quarters on Dokdo so they could care for Kim, but they, too, were turned down.

At the time, the office of Ulleung County, the North Gyeongsang constituency that includes the islets, rejected the reported change of address, saying that her family had not gone through the required procedure of obtaining approval from the Dokdo Management Office for permanent residence at the residential quarters.

Kim’s family then sought approval from the office, but were told that there were no plans to select additional permanent residents of Dokdo "unless special circumstances arose," and that any future process to choose more permanent residents would require consultations with related agencies.

Dokdo [KIM JUNG-SEOK]

Objecting to the decision, Kim’s family filed a lawsuit with the Daegu District Court against the Dokdo supervisory office of Ulleung and the county head, seeking to overturn the refusal of the permanent residence request and related decisions. The court dismissed the case.

In 2003, a woman once registered her address at the residential quarters as a cohabitant of Kim's late husband, but authorities later removed her from the registry after determining that she had not actually used the site as her permanent residence.

The interest in claiming residence on the islets may be the very reason it is so hard to gain approval: Many applicants have a vested interest in the future of the islets without any real intention or ability to live there.

Under the Resident Registration Act, a person must actually live at an address in order to register it as their residence, but living on the islets is difficult with the lack of everyday infrastructure, and Dokdo's designation as National Monument No. 336 entails strict protections that impose tight restrictions on habitation and development.

Kim and her husband were an exception. Their move to Dokdo in the 1960s and nearly 50 years of fishing and uninterrupted residence were documented, allowing them to officially register their address on the islets in 1991 and receive annual approval from Ulleung County to permanently reside at the Dokdo Residential Quarters.

Dokdo residents’ quarters [ULLEUNG COUNTY GOVERNMENT]

The couple also played a symbolic role in demonstrating Korea’s effective control over the islets by casting absentee ballots in every election from there.

Ulleung County is now mulling its next steps with the absence of registered residents on Dokdo. Some argue that the islets should continue to have registered residents to reinforce the territorial symbolism with citizens who actually live and work on the islets.

“Although about 40 Dokdo Coast Guard personnel and Dokdo Management Office employees are stationed on the islets, that is only a temporary residence,” said Cho Jong-cheol, the secretary-general of the civic group Dokdo Sarang. “For Dokdo to cease being considered an uninhabited island, residents have to live there, engage in economic activity and pay taxes.”

“The longer the absence persists, the more it gives Japan an opening to press its territorial claim, so urgent countermeasures are needed.”

Voting takes place on Dokdo at an absentee polling station is set up in the first case of its kind in constitutional historyon May 25, 2006. Dokdo residents Kim Sung-do and Kim Sin-yeol cast their ballots with Seo Gi-jong, head of the Dokdo Volunteer Guards Veterans Association. [JOONGANG ILBO]

In fact, a total of 112 Japanese nationals were registered residents of Dokdo as of the end of last year.

The figure marks a more than fourfold increase from the 26 recorded at the end of 2005, according to Japanese government data. The rise is believed to be linked to a relocation campaign led by right-wing groups in Japan.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY KIM JUNG-SEOK [[email protected]]