Seoul rebukes Tokyo’s Dokdo claim
The Ministry of National Defense protested against the Japanese government, Wednesday, over its distribution of a Korean-language version of the summary of its 2014 Defense White Paper that stated Korea’s easternmost islets of Dokdo are part of its territory.
The ministry called in the military attache from the Japanese Embassy in Seoul at 9:50 a.m. to rebuke the action.
“The Seoul government lodged a strong protest against Japan in order to prevent recurrence of such an unjustifiable act,” said a ministry official, asking not to be named.
According to the official, the Japanese government has compiled the summary of the white paper, and delivered about 50 copies to the information division under the ministry on Jan. 16.
The information division passed them to a division in charge of the East Asian affairs of the ministry, Tuesday.
The neighbor’s annual paper, released in August last year, carried a map showing the rocky islets as Japan’s territory. Tokyo repeated such territorial claims for the past 10 consecutive years.
Tokyo translated the summary of the 2013 paper into the Korean language, and delivered it to the Korean Embassy in Japan. But that copy did not contain Tokyo’s territorial claim, the ministry said.
It marked the first time that that the neighboring country delivered the Korean-language version including its Dokdo claim to the Seoul’s the defense ministry. “We returned the all copies when calling in the attache,” the official said.
However, criticism also arose over the government’s sluggish response to the distribution.
When asked why it took five days for the ministry to grasp the situation and launch a protest, the official said that members of the information division, which received the copies first, were only able to pass them to the relevant division on Tuesday because its office was off over the weekend.
Korea has geographically, historically and legally controlled Dokdo with a small police detachment since its liberation from Japan’s 1910-45 colonial. But, Tokyo has claimed that the islets, which lie closer to Korea, are part of its territory, although it never established sovereignty.
The latest in a series of provocative moves by Japan was the creation of a video clip renewing its claims. Its state agency in charge of territorial issues posted the 17-minute clip on YouTube on Dec. 24 to argue that Japanese people fished in waters surrounding Dokdo in the past.