Seoul, Dec 25 (DPA) South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung Hwan summoned the Japanese ambassador Friday over educational guidelines released by Tokyo on rocky islands claimed by the two countries.
The meeting was a repeat of a May 2008 discussion between Yu and Ambassador Toshinori Shigeieto over reports Japan planned to claim the islets as its territory in a revised manual for teachers.

In the new handbook for high school teachers released Friday, the education ministry refrained from naming the disputed islets, called Dokdo by Koreans and Takeshima by Japanese.

But as media reports surfaced of Japanese Education Minister Tatsuo Kawabata’s insistence on Japan’s sovereignty over the islets, the South Korean Foreign Ministry sought clarification from the envoy.

“There is no change in the fact that Takeshima is our territory,” Kawabata said in a press conference. “Our country is responsible for its own education.”

Japanese cabinet ministers denied a shift in their government’s stance, according to Japan’s Kyodo News.

The new handbook said high school teachers should “deepen the understanding (of students) on territorial issues by providing accurate information based on the Japanese government’s proper claim and their study at junior high school”.

Previously, a handbook for junior high schools published last year compared diplomatic disagreements between South Korea and Japan over the islets to disputes over the Northern Territories, known as the South Kiril Islands in Russia. The handbook said the northern islands were “Japan’s own territory - occupied illegally by Russia”.

Tokyo and Seoul had vowed in April 2008 to put aside historical issues and improve their relations, which have been strained over issues stemming from the past, such as Japan’s 1910-45 occupation of the Korean Peninsula.

At a September summit, Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and South Korean President Lee Myung Bak agreed to build “closer-than-ever relations” after the August election of Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan.

The disputed islets, believed to be the site of gas deposits, lie 700 km west of Tokyo and 450 km southeast of Seoul. They are under South Korean administration and claimed as part of an exclusive economic zone.

A day before the new handbook was released, Japan’s government came under fire from activists for paying South Korean forced labourers during World War II just over a dollar for their work.