Seoul (South Korea), April 27: The foreign ministry called in a Japanese diplomat on Tuesday to protest Tokyo's repeated claims to South Korea's easternmost islets of Dokdo in its annual foreign policy paper.
The ministry expressed regrets to Hirohisa Soma, deputy chief of mission at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, after Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi reported this year's Diplomatic Bluebook laying claim to Dokdo to a Cabinet session presided over by Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga.
Choi Young-sam, the ministry spokesman, urged Japan to immediately retract its "futile" claims to Dokdo.
"We make it clear again that the government will respond sternly to any kind of provocation by the Japanese government regarding Dokdo," he said, stressing the islets are Korean territory historically, geographically and by international law.
Dokdo has long been a recurring source of tension between the two neighbors, as Tokyo continues to lay claim to the islets in its policy papers, public statements and school textbooks.
South Korea has been in effective control of Dokdo, with a small police detachment, since its liberation from Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule.
The claims to Dokdo came as the two countries are stuck in a protracted row over wartime history and trade.
Though the latest blue book retained its 2020 reference to South Korea as an "important neighboring country," it restated Japan's arguments related to the issues of Japan's wartime sexual slavery and forced labor.
Tokyo has maintained that the historical issues were already addressed under bilateral agreements, and that Seoul has failed to follow through on them.
On the sexual slavery issue, Choi demanded Japan act in line with the "spirits of apology and atonement" enshrined in the 1993 statement by then Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono and the 2015 bilateral deal on the issue.
"This is an unprecedented issue of human rights abuses against women in an armed conflict and of infringement on universal human rights," the spokesman said.
The Tokyo government has annually published the blue book on foreign policy and its stances on international affairs since 1957.
Source: Yonhap
