Gov't condemns Japan's Dokdo claim in education guidelines

By Jun Ji-hye

The government strongly condemned Japan’s approval of revised educational guidelines that call for its elementary and middle schools to obligatorily teach students that Korea’s easternmost islets of Dokdo belong to Japan, Friday.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Education demanded the guidelines be immediately corrected.

Japan’s latest provocation regarding Dokdo is expected to further worsen Seoul-Tokyo relations that have already been deadlocked after the Japanese government recalled Ambassador to South Korea Yasumasa Nagamine in early January to protest the installation of a “comfort woman” statue in front of its consulate in Busan.

“The government strongly denounces the Japanese government for finally approving the education guidelines for its elementary and middle school social studies that include its unjustified claims to our inherent territory of Dokdo despite our repeated warnings,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

It warned that Japanese students will learn false history under the guidelines.

Later in the day, the ministry called in Hideo Suzuki, a minister at the Japanese Embassy, who is currently serving as acting ambassador, to lodge an official protest, stressing that Dokdo is Korea’s inherent territory historically, geographically and by international law.

Korea has effectively controlled Dokdo with a small police detachment there since its liberation from Japan in 1945.

The approval of the guidelines came after the Japanese education ministry announced last week a list of newly authorized textbooks to be used beginning April next year for high school sophomores.

Of the 24 newly approved social studies textbooks, 19, or nearly 80 percent, claim that Dokdo is Japanese territory. Some state that South Korea is illegally occupying Dokdo, called Takeshima in Japanese.