S. Korea creating task force to defend claim to islets eyed by Japan

Jul 27 07:07 AM US/Eastern

SEOUL, July 27 (AP) - (Kyodo) — South Korea will create an inter-ministerial task force as part of its efforts to raise international recognition of its claim to a cluster of rocky islets it controls that are claimed also by Japan, Yonhap News Agency reported.

The report said Foreign Minister Yu Myung Hwan ordered the establishment of the inter-ministerial task force to monitor moves in other countries to rename the islets or modify their status in favor of Japan.

It said the decision comes after the U.S. Board on Geographic Names was found to have recently revised its description of the disputed territory to assume a more neutral position, prompting the South Korean Embassy in Washington to lodge a protest.

The board's website previously said the Liancourt Rocks, another name for the islets known as Dokdo in South Korea and as Takeshima in Japan, were under South Korea's control, but it now names them an area of "undesignated sovereignty."

The name Liancourt Rocks was taken from a French whaling ship that first introduced the territory to Europe in the 19th century. The islets are located in what South Korea calls the East Sea and Japan calls the Sea of Japan.

South Korea has adopted a more aggressive stance on the territorial dispute since Japan's Education Ministry earlier this month decided to include a claim to sovereignty over the islets for the first time in a teaching guideline for junior high schools, sparking a backlash in South Korea.

South Korea has recalled its ambassador from Tokyo for an indefinite period, while angry Koreans have inundated the Japanese Embassy in Seoul with a series of anti-Japanese protests.

According Yonhap, online world encyclopedias are increasingly adopting "Liancourt Rocks" to refer to the disputed territory rather than "Dokdo," apparently as a result of Japanese lobbying.

The report quoted figures compiled by a South Korean nongovernmental organization as saying the number of websites using "Liancourt Rocks" surged to 38,500 in July, up from 32,500 in May and 22,000 in October 2005.