South Korea on Wednesday urged Japan to promptly delete a Youtube video claiming its sovereignty on the Dokdo islets, known as Takeshima in Japan, calling the action as anachronistic and provocative.
"We strongly protest against the Japanese government trying to damage our dominium over the Dokdo islets as Japan's Foreign Ministry produced a video that makes nonsensical claims on our territorial islets and distributed it on the Internet," Seoul's Foreign Ministry said in a statement, urging its neighboring country to delete the video immediately.
The 87-second-long video, which was posted on the Youtube a week ago, claimed that Japan set up its dominium on the islets in the 17th century and it was reconfirmed in 1905, saying that South Korea has taken illegal control over the rocky outcroppings since 1952 when then President Rhee Syngman drew the so-called Syngman Line.
Seoul's Foreign Ministry called the video posting as non- historical and anachronistic, noting that such provocative action has been a major stumbling block to enhancing diplomatic ties between Seoul and Tokyo.
Relations between the two countries have been strained since Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took office in late 2012. The Abe-led government conducted its first survey on Japanese adults in June to ask whether the islets, around 90 kilometers southeast of South Korea's Ulleung Island, belong to Japan or South Korea.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye said at a meeting with the visiting Pentagon chief in late September that no trust has been built between Seoul and Tokyo due mainly to the Japanese leadership's repeated comments of degrading history.
Park cited South Korean women forced to be mobilized by Japan as sex slaves during World War II, saying that those women were still being humiliated by the Japanese leadership.
Park has not made a state visit to Japan since she took office in February although she traveled to China in June and to the United States in May. Her predecessors tended to select Japan as the second overseas trip destination.
People in South Korea seemed to turn increasingly antagonistic against the Abe-led Japanese government as it showed no repentance over its past atrocities during the 1910-45 colonial rule of South Korea. According to the recent poll on South Korean adults, more than 70 percent of respondents said that Japan is not South Korea's ally.
