S Korea slams Japan's isle claim

Japan approves defense white paper for 2014

SEOUL -- South Korea on Tuesday denounced Japan's renewed territorial claim to a pair of islets, called Dokdo here and Takeshima in Japan lying halfway between the two countries.

The Japanese government, led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, laid its repeated claim to the rocky outcroppings in its defense white paper earlier in the day, saying the islets are Japan's indigenous territory.

South Korea's foreign ministry said in a statement that such claim was "unacceptable," urging the Abe cabinet to rescind it and take measures to prevent recurrence of such provocations.

Japan has laid territorial claims to the islets through the defense report in the past 10 years.

The ministry said Japan kept worsening bilateral relations through such provocations while asking South Korea to make efforts to improve ties between Seoul and Tokyo.

It said that improvement in the bilateral relations will be far away if the Japanese government continues to lay its " unjustifiable" territorial claim to the Dokdo islets.

Japan's claim to the Dokdo islets, which became the first victim to Japan's imperialistic occupation of the Korean Peninsula, is equivalent to no repentance over its past history of aggression, the ministry said, adding the Dokdo islets are South Korea's indigenous territory in terms of history, geography and international law.

In 1905, the militaristic Japan incorporated the islets into the Shimane Prefecture. South Korea has controlled the rocky outcropping since 1954 when it stationed border guards there.