South Korea and Japan will hold talks next week on setting their maritime borders around a set of rocky islets that have been at the center of a long-standing territorial dispute, South Korea's top diplomat said yesterday.
Officials will hold the talks -- the second such meeting this year -- on Monday and Tuesday in Seoul, South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said.
South Korea effectively controls the islets -- called Dokdo in Korean and Takeshima in Japanese -- that are also claimed by Japan.
Both sides want the islets, which lie roughly halfway between the two countries, as a basis to claim exclusive rights over the rich fishing grounds and possible deposits of methane hydrate in the area, which can be used to produce natural gas.
The last round of talks in June ended without an agreement.
The feud over the islets is just one of many issues ruffling relations between the neighbors. South Korea has strongly criticized Japanese officials' visits to a Tokyo war shrine and say some Japanese school textbooks glorify its wartime atrocities.
"No action can also be a solution to problems," Ban told a press club in Seoul yesterday, warning Japan against taking any action that could provoke South Koreans, who still harbor deep-rooted bitterness over Japan's colonial rule.
"Japan holds the key to the problem," Ban said.
"Depending on how it chooses to act, the problem can be solved even today or tomorrow," he said.
The territorial row flared anew in April when Japan announced plans to survey the waters near the islets. South Korea dispatching more than 20 gunboats in response. A high-seas showdown was averted when Japan canceled the plans after a last-minute compromise.
In July, South Korea conducted its own survey in the disputed waters, defying Japan's protests.
Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, coastal nations can claim an economic zone extending 200 nautical miles (370km) from their shores.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not