File photo on protest near the Japanese embassy in Seoul[ Photo by Yoo Dae-gil = dbeorlf123@]
A thorny territorial row intensified Friday between South Korea and Japan after Tokyo authorized updated high school textbooks that echoed its controversial claims to islets controlled by Seoul.
South Korea's foreign ministry, in a statement, "strongly" condemned Tokyo's approval of the textbooks and called in Hideo Suzuki, a minister at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, to lodge a protest.
"We once again urge Japan to show its efforts to open a new chapter of Korea-Japan relations through sincere action and squarely face the truth of history," the statement read.
Nearly 80 percent of Japan's newly approved textbooks claimed that South Korea is "illegally occupying" the sparsely populated islets, known as Dokdo in South Korea and Takeshima in Japan, in the Sea of Japan (East Sea). Many of the updated textbooks state Dokdo is Japan's "inherent" territory.
Ties between the two Asian neighbours have been in the doldrums for years, with South Korea insisting that Japan should apologize and make amends for abuses during its 1910-45 rule over the Korean peninsula.
Especially, Seoul has urged Tokyo to address the issue of Korean women forced to work in Japanese wartime military brothels. Japan insists the issue of the so-called "comfort women" was settled in a 1965 agreement that restored diplomatic ties.
Last December, the two countries reached a landmark agreement on comfort women, with Tokyo apologizing and agreeing to provide one billion yen (8.9 million US dollars) for a foundation to be established in South Korea to support the surviving victims.
The deal, however, has yet to be implemented because the victims refused to accept it.
Aju News Lim Chang-won = cwlim34@ajunews.com
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