Korean-Americans residing in Washington and its surrounding areas Wednesday lashed out at Japan's new school textbook guidelines identifying South Korea's easternmost islets of Dokdo as Japanese territory.
``Such an act by the Japanese government violates South Korea's sovereignty and comes from militaristic ideas which deserve criticism from the international community," they said in a statement at a press conference, pledging not to accept the Japanese action.
The statement comes one day after the U.S. Library of Congress, apparently in response to South Korean anger over Tokyo's move, postponed a meeting on changing the name of Dokdo, also claimed by Japan, to the Liancourt Rocks, which had been named after a French whaling ship that first introduced the islets to Europe.
South Korea Monday recalled its ambassador to Japan in protest over the Japanese Education Ministry's release of new guidelines for school textbooks describing the Dokdo islets, lying in waters between the two Asian neighbors, as Japanese territory.
Japan took control of the islets in 1904 soon after it won a war with Russia in the East Sea and forced Korea to sign a treaty nullifying its diplomatic sovereignty.
South Korea has been maintaining scores of police officers on the isolated islets since 1954. Korea was liberated in 1945 from decades of Japanese colonial rule.