S. Koreans protest Japanese island claim

SEOUL, March 30 (UPI) -- South Korea Wednesday called in Tokyo's ambassador to protest new school books in Japan that claim several small islands as Japanese territory.

Some of the middle school textbooks Japan approved for next year assert that South Korea is "illegally occupying" the Dokdo islands, the Yonhap News Agency reports.

"Our government strongly protests ... and urges Japan to correct this immediately," Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Byung-jae said. "… We will respond sternly to any attempt by Japan to impair our sovereignty over Dokdo."

He also said new Japanese textbooks "still justify and beautify wrong views of history," a longstanding dispute between the countries.

Cho stressed, however, that the spat would not interrupt South Korean earthquake aid to Japan.

"I think that the support and assistance flooding not only from the government, but also from all levels of society is a manifestation of pure and beautiful spirits of humanity," he said. "We hope that this textbook issue won't have any effect on this thinking and spirit."

Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan told Japanese Ambassador Masatoshi Muto the textbooks aggravate "the painful scar on our people in that Dokdo is our territory that had been forcefully occupied" during Japanese colonization, an official said.