Okinotori

Okinotori is a coral reef, geologically an atoll, on the Palau-Kyushu Ridge in the Philippine Sea, about 1,740 kilometers south of Tokyo, making it Japan's southernmost territory and its only holding south of the Tropic of Cancer. Its natural land area totals just 9.44 square meters across two rocks, sitting on a shoal of 8,482 square meters and rising no more than 1.5 meters above the water, and since 1987 Japan has encased the rocks in concrete and built artificial structures to slow their erosion, spending more than 600 million dollars on the effort. It is administered as part of Ogasawara Village in Tokyo Prefecture and is uninhabited apart from an automated research station on a stilt platform. Japan claims a 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone around the atoll, a claim China, South Korea and Taiwan dispute on the grounds that, under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, rocks that cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own carry no such zone.