On August 10, 1951, a secret correspondence currently known as the Rusk documents was sent to South Korea communicating the then U.S. position on issues of territorial sovereignty in the Peace Treaty explaining why the U.S. believed Liancourt Rocks were Japanese territory: "This normally uninhabited rock formation was according to our information never treated as part of Korea and, since about 1905, has been under the jurisdiction of the Oki Islands Branch Office of Shimane Prefecture of Japan. The island does not appear ever before to have been claimed by Korea." In September 1954 and March 1962, Japan proposed to South Korea that the dispute be referred to the International Court of Justice, but South Korea rejected the proposals. In 2005, members of the Japanese prefecture of Shimane (the prefecture to which the islands belong according to the Japanese claim) declared "Takeshima Day", to highlight their territorial claim to the islands. Japan again proposed bringing the dispute to the International Court of Justice in August 2012, which was also officially rejected by South Korea on August 30, 2012.
