Japan Dismisses Korean Dokdo Protest

South Korea`s Ambassador to Japan visited the Japanese Foreign Ministry yesterday to file an official protest with Vice Foreign Minister Shotaro Yachi over the Japanese government’s approval of high school social science textbook descriptions of Dokdo, a cluster of islets in the East Sea, as Japanese territory.

Japanese Education and Science Minister Kenji Kosaka dismissed the Korean’s government’s protest, saying, “Japan’s textbooks should be accurately written from Japan’s point of view.”

He added, “We have been asking textbook publishers to make an accurate description when it comes to territories. This time, the Japanese government instructed them to describe the islets precisely because there were some dubious phrases in previous books that could create misunderstandings about Takeshima [the Japanese name for Dokdo].”

Kwang-Am Cheon iam@donga.com