Seoul protests Tokyo’s Dokdo claims

Seoul on Sunday repeated its years-long routine of filing yet another complaint to Tokyo against Japan’s claims to the Korea-controlled islets of Dokdo.

Korea’s Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that it “sternly protested” the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s recent distribution of brochures introducing Takeshima, as Dokdo is known in Japan, as a Japanese territory in 10 different languages.

The move came a day after Japanese daily Yomiuri Shimbun reported that Japan’s Foreign Ministry had started sending out booklets arguing that Dokdo is Japanese territory in far more languages than before.

According to the newspaper, the ministry has distributed more than 23,500 such brochures in Japanese, Korean and English at home and abroad.

But since early December, it started making the booklets in a total of 10 languages, adding Chinese, French, Arabic, German, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, and distributing several thousand to Japanese foreign embassies. The Japanese Foreign Ministry also updated its official Web site so to include its territorial claims.

“We again made a strong demand that the materials be removed,” Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

By Jung Ha-won Staff Reporter [hawon@joongang.co.kr]