By Bae Ji-sook
Staff Reporter
The Yomiuri Shimbun, a Japanese daily, has submitted a document to the Seoul Central District Court supporting its report that President Lee Myung-bak had asked then-Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda to wait for an "appropriate" time to renew his claim on Korea's easternmost islets of Dokdo in 2008.
According to the court file, Yomiuri said its article describing President Lee and then-Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda's talk on July 15 2008 was based on the fact that ― when Yasuo told Lee that his government had decided to refer to Dokdo as Japanese territory ― Lee did not protest the decision itself but instead told Fukuda that the timing was not right and asked him to wait before announcing the change.
The Fukuda administration approved a middle school class guidebook the same month that claimed that Dokdo belongs to Japan. The move infuriated many Koreans.
Opposition party leaders requested that President Lee apologize, referring to his comments as being serious enough to warrant impeachment.
Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Lee Dong-kwan denied the report, calling the story completely inaccurate. The spokesman charged that the report might have been part of a manipulative effort by the Japanese media to cause a stir in the Korean political field.
Yomiuri refuted this by saying, "Asahi, another major daily, reported similar content in a slightly different wording. This proves that what we have written is a fact and that the responsibility should go to the speaker of the comment, not the journalists."
The Japanese newspaper also stated: "All reporters are aware of the sensitivity of the issue. They would not dare manipulate what the heads of the administrations had said."
The Japanese media's claims came after a group of 1,886 Korean citizens filed for a 4.11 million won compensation suit against Yomiuri for the "groundless report." They said in a statement: ``The report was to provoke the Korean people and eventually lead to the island being recognized by the international community as a potential seed of conflict between the two countries.''
A Cheong Wa Dae spokesman declined to comment on Yomiuri's latest action.
bjs@koreatimes.co.kr
