ROK protests against Japan's new education guidelines on disputed islets

ASIA PACIFIC DAILY

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South Korea on Wednesday expressed strong protest against Japan's new education guidelines on a set of disputed islets, known as Dokdo islets in South Korea and Takeshima in Japan.

Seoul's foreign ministry said in a statement that the education guidelines for elementary and middle school students, which were unveiled by the Japanese government earlier in the day, renewed its unfair territorial claims to Dokdo islets which are an indigenous territory of South Korea.

The statement strongly protested against the guidelines, urging Japan to immediately repeal them.

The educations guidelines, which would be gradually implemented from the year 2020, refer to the rocky islets lying halfway between South Korea and Japan as the islets of Japan which South Korea illegally occupy.

The islets were incorporated into Japan's territory in 1910 when the Japanese colonization of the Korean Peninsula started. They were then returned to South Korea when the peninsula liberated from the Japanese colonial rule in 1945.

The South Korean foreign ministry said the new education guidelines will insert a wrong concept of territory into the future generations of Japan and that the guidelines will have a negative influence on the development of the bilateral relations.

The rocky outcroppings have been a major source of diplomatic rows and even emotional battle both between the general public and governments of Seoul and Tokyo. South Korea has deployed security guards on the islets since 1954.

(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)