South Korea on Thursday strongly denounced Japan for the
latter's campaign to lay claim to a group of islets located in the
Sea of Japan through revising school textbooks.
"An analysis of 55 kinds of Japan's high school textbooks on
geography, history, and social affairs for next year reviewed by
the Japanese Education Ministry showed that 20 of them include
distorted descriptions of Dokdo as a territory of Japan," South
Korea's Foreign Ministry spokesman Choo Kyu-ho said in a
statement.
It reflects the Japanese government's intention of glorifying
its wartime past and teaching distorted history to students, the
spokesman said.
The statement came one day after the Japanese Education Ministry
released the results of its annual review of new high school
textbooks that will be introduced in 2007.
The controversial islets, called Dokdo in Korean and Takeshima
in Japanese, always is the fuse of diplomatic disputes between the
two neighboring countries.
"The (South Korean) government urges the Japanese government to
repeal its intolerable claims to South Korea's territory of
Dokdo... The government once again clarifies its position to deal
sternly with the issue in terms of territorial protection," the
strongly-worded statement said.
It also questioned Japan's willingness to develop the friendly
relations with South Korea and seek regional peace and
co-prosperity.
South Korea insists that the Dokdo islets, located some 89
kilometers southeast to South Korean Uleung Island and 160
kilometers northwest to Japanese Oki Island in the Sea of Japan,
have been listed as its territory in history literature since the
fifth century.
While Japan also claims the islets has been its territory since
the 17th century, as written in literature.
Japan started annexation of the Korean Peninsula in early 20th
century and completed it in 1910.
After liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945, the first
South Korean President Lee Seung-man issued a presidential
declaration on the dominion over the coastal sea and sovereignty
over Dokdo in January 1952. And Seoul has deployed coast police on
the islets since 1954.
The two sides also have deep differences over the name of the
Sea of Japan, as South Korea insists that it should be called as
"East Sea."
The territorial dispute has deepened since a Japanese prefecture
last year designated Feb. 22 as "Takeshima Day."
It also reported that South Korea's Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon
plans to call in Japanese Ambassador to Seoul Shotaro Oshima later
in the day to lodge a complaint over the issue.
It seemed the latest development may further deteriorate
bilateral relations between the two countries, which were already
worsened by a series of disputes over history issue and Japanese
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's repeated visit to a
controversial shrine.
(Xinhua News Agency March 30, 2006)
