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Japan textbook reignites islets dispute(UPI Top Stories Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)South Korea Thursday protested a newly revised Japanese textbook that reasserts Japan's claim on a group of tiny islets that South Korea also claims to own. South Korea's Foreign Ministry issued a statement urging the Japanese government to immediately retract its unreasonable and intolerable claim over Dokdo, which is an integral part of our territory, Kyodo News reported. The statement came a day after Japan's education ministry asked schoolbook publishers to identify the islets, known as Takeshima in Japan, as Japanese territory. The South Korean statement called Japan's claim over the islets a ''clear manifestation'' of its ''whitewashing, distorting and glorifying'' of past history. The statement also criticized visits by Japan's prime minister and other high-level officials to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, where war criminals are enshrined together with war dead. In March 2005 lawmakers in Shimane, the Japanese prefecture closest to the islets, passed an ordinance creating a Takeshima Day -- a move that unleashed a storm of protests in South Korea. |