South Korea yesterday spurned an attempt by Japan to calm emotions in an escalating territorial dispute over a string of barely habitable islets, as Tokyo warned traveling citizens to avoid protests in South Korea, where an activist set himself on fire over the spat.
South Korea's Coast Guard said it was reinforcing patrols around the islets, called Dokdo in Korea and Takeshima in Japan, doubling the number of ships responsible for monitoring the area to six.
The long-simmering dispute erupted this week when a local Japanese assembly voted to designate a special day to commemorate Tokyo's claim to the islets between the two countries, drawing intense anti-Japanese sentiment in South Korea. The move was symbolic, but the central Tokyo government has refused to repudiate the vote.
"What is important is that in the future, the Japanese government show actions, not words," Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon told senior officials from the governing Uri Party on Friday, the party said. His comment was in response to a statement late Thursday by the Japanese foreign minister that Tokyo accepts the pain it has caused in the past and has sympathy with Koreans' feelings.
Meanwhile, South Korea's Masan city council on Friday passed a resolution marking June 19 as "Daemado Day," the Korean name for Japan's Tshushima islands just off the southeastern tip of the Korean peninsula.
Some South Korean historians argue those islands -- considerably larger than Dokdo and home to 40,500 people -- were once controlled by Korea.
Tsushima city official Hideo Nejime said even though the islands border South Korea that they have been under Japanese control for centuries.US occupation forces kept them as part of Japan when Korean leaders claimed territorial rights after Japan's World War II defeat, he said.
"We have had close economic ties with South Korea, but throughout history we are part of Japan and there is no question about it," Nejime said.
The row could threaten a boom in Japanese travel to South Korea spawned in part by the massive popularity of a South Korean soap opera. Some 2 million Japanese went to South Korea in the first 10 months of last year, compared to 1.8 million who went in all of 2003. The Japanese Foreign Ministry said yesterday it issued a travel notice urging citizens to stay away from protests in South Korea, which it said were not expected to end soon.
A ship that appears to be taking on the identity of a scrapped gas carrier exited the Strait of Hormuz on Friday, showing how strategies to get through the waterway are evolving as the Middle East war progresses. The vessel identifying as liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier Jamal left the Strait on Friday morning, ship-tracking data show. However, the same tanker was also recorded as having beached at an Indian demolition yard in October last year, where it is being broken up, according to market participants and port agent’s reports. The ship claiming to be Jamal is likely a zombie vessel that
Japan is to downgrade its description of ties with China from “one of its most important” in an annual diplomatic report, according to a draft reviewed by Reuters, as relations with Beijing worsen. This year’s Diplomatic Bluebook, which Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s government is expected to approve next month, would instead describe China as an important neighbor and the relationship as “strategic” and “mutually beneficial.” The draft cites a series of confrontations with Beijing over the past year, including export controls on rare earths, radar lock-ons targeting Japanese military aircraft and increased pressure around Taiwan. The shift in tone underscores a deterioration
LAW CONSTRAINTS: The US has been pressing allies to send warships to open the Strait, but Tokyo’s military actions are limited under its postwar pacifist constitution Japan could consider deploying its military for minesweeping in the Strait of Hormuz if a ceasefire is reached in the war on Iran, Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Toshimitsu Motegi said yesterday. “If there were to be a complete ceasefire, hypothetically speaking, then things like minesweeping could come up,” Motegi said. “This is purely hypothetical, but if a ceasefire were established and naval mines were creating an obstacle, then I think that would be something to consider.” Japan’s military actions are limited under its postwar pacifist constitution, but 2015 security legislation allows Tokyo to use its Self-Defense Forces overseas if an attack,
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) yesterday faced a regional election battle in Rhineland-Palatinate, now held by the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). Merz’s CDU has enjoyed a narrow poll lead over the SPD — their coalition partners at the national level — who have ruled the mid-sized state for 35 years. Polling third is the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which spells a greater threat to the two centrist parties in several state elections in September in the country’s ex-communist east. The picturesque state of Rhineland-Palatinate, bordering France, Belgium and Luxembourg and with a population of about 4 million,
RSS