S. Korea protests Japan's territorial claim to Dokdo

SEOUL, Dec. 28 (Yonhap) -- South Korea on Sunday strongly protested Japan's
stepped-up move to claim Dokdo, the easternmost South Korean islets in the body
of water between the two countries.
A day earlier, Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported that the Japanese
Foreign Ministry has published a 14-page booklet detailing its claim to the
islets in seven more languages -- Arabic, Arabic, Chinese, French, German,
Portuguese, Russian and Spanish -- in addition to English, Korean and Japanese.
The report said that the Japanese government plans to distribute 1,000 copies of
each language version of the booklet titled, "10 Issues on Takeshima," overseas
through its diplomatic missions.
The booklet also can be downloaded from the Japanese ministry's Web site,
according to the report.
Dokdo, a group of rocky outcroppings in the East Sea, is effectively controlled
by South Korea, but Japan has repeatedly made attempts to lay claim to it,
calling it "Takeshima."
Tokyo, however, dropped the description of Dokdo in its draft of a new teaching
manual for high school students that was released last week.
"We have been strongly protesting against the Japanese Ministry of Foreign
Affairs in writing over its online publication of the booklet and have been
continuously urging them to delete it," the South Korean foreign ministry said in
a press release.
"We further protested against Tokyo's expanded publication of the booklet in 10
languages from the original three languages and repeatedly urged them to stop
it," it said.
The South Korean government has published a booklet of its own on the islets,
titled "The Truth of Dokdo," in 10 languages.
ygkim@yna.co.kr
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