Local Japanese lawmakers passed a bill yesterday stressing a claim to a small island chain controlled by South Korea, defying Seoul's warnings that the dispute had set back reconciliation between the countries.
The assembly of western Shimane Prefecture enacted an ordinance designating Feb. 22 as "Takeshima Day" in recognition of the rocky islets of the same name, which are uninhabited but lucrative for fishermen, a local official said.
The law said the day, which marks a 1905 notice declaration of the Japanese province's rule of the islands, is meant to "promote movements to establish sovereignty over Takeshima at an early date and raise national awareness over the issue."
The renewed Japanese claims on the islets, known as the Dokdo in Korean, have infuriated South Korea, where bitter memories remain over Japan's brutal colonial rule over the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945.
"It is needless to say that Shimane prefecture's deplorable act has no impact on the status of Dokdo belonging to our territory," South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon said in a press briefing.
Ban, who canceled his scheduled trip to Tokyo this month amid rising tension, said Seoul would take countermeasures "to further cement our effective control" of the rocky islets.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi called for calm in the escalating dispute.
"We need to handle the matter calmly as there has been an emotional confrontation," Koizumi told reporters.
Hours before Wednesday's vote, police in the Shimane assembly building seized a knife from a South Korean activist who tried to slice off his finger to write a protest in blood.
"It was dangerous as there were many people around," a local police spokesman said. "We took the knife, as we cannot predict what will happen on this special day."
Two South Koreans cut off their fingers outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul on Monday.
The islets are just flyspecks on the map, located in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) some 250km north of Japan's western Shimane region and 215km east of South Korea's port city of Uljin.
Japanese fishermen have accused South Korean maritime police of completely restricting access around the island, allegedly giving the Japanese less choice fishing grounds.
"I want Japanese people to know about the Takeshima problem. The bill was part of our efforts to appeal to the Japanese public," said Kotaro Yanai, a Shimane prefecture official.
"We have seen little progress on this issue. Unless we do something about it, I am worried that the whole Takeshima issue may be forgotten," he said.
Relations between Tokyo and Seoul had been warming in the past few years with South Korea -- unlike China -- largely putting on the backburner the issue of how Japan remembers its wartime history.
The Takeshima dispute came on a year designated by Tokyo and Seoul as the "friendship year" to mark four decades after their 1965 treaty normalizing relations. In a March 1 speech marking the 86th anniversary of a 1919 Korean uprising against Japanese rule, South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun said Japan should apologize and offer compensation for atrocities against Koreans. The president's call surprised Tokyo, which has said it fulfilled its obligations by signing the 1965 treaty and providing Seoul with US$800 million dollars in loans and grants. Seoul has also filed a complaint over the latest edition of a Japanese history textbook which South Korean officials say justifies Japan's occupation of Asian countries before and during World War II.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
CYBERCRIME, TRAFFICKING: A ‘pattern of state failures’ allowed the billion-dollar industry to flourish, including failures to investigate human rights abuses, it said Human rights group Amnesty International yesterday accused Cambodia’s government of “deliberately ignoring” abuses by cybercrime gangs that have trafficked people from across the world, including children, into slavery at brutal scam compounds. The London-based group said in a report that it had identified 53 scam centers and dozens more suspected sites across the country, including in the Southeast Asian nation’s capital, Phnom Penh. The prison-like compounds were ringed by high fences with razor wire, guarded by armed men and staffed by trafficking victims forced to defraud people across the globe, with those inside subjected to punishments including shocks from electric batons, confinement
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
RSS