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Pyongyang weighs in on Seoul-Tokyo isle dispute+(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)TOKYO, April 20_(Kyodo) _ North Korea on Thursday accused Japan of laying claim to a pair of South Korean-controlled islets, now at the center of an escalating dispute between Tokyo and Seoul, as part of its "ambitions for territorial expansion." The state-run Korean Central News Agency slammed "the Japanese reactionaries' evermore undisguised attempt to grab Tok Islet, part of the inviolable territory of Korea." The reference was to the rocky outcroppings called Takeshima in Japan and Dokto in South Korea. Seoul has deployed more than 18 coast guard ships and warned Tokyo it will take "stern responses" if Japanese coast guard vessels cross into waters near the isles to conduct a maritime survey as planned. The KCNA report, citing a statement of a youth league spokesman, said Japanese authorities are "busying themselves to instill militarism and the ambition for territorial expansion into the younger generation in a bid to realize the old dream of the 'Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere' at any cost." "The Japanese authorities' shameless 'claim to Tok Islet' will get them nowhere and the old dream of the 'Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere' is a pipe dream," it said. It said the disputed land "has been controlled by Koreans as part of the territory of Korea from the olden times and this was admitted even by several historical records of Japan as well as many historical documents of Korea including 'The History of the Three Kingdoms.'" The report said Japanese authorities have in recent years been aggressively claiming "territories of other countries," citing Japan's isle disputes with China and Russia as cases in point, "while frantically inciting militarism and working hard to convert the country into a military giant." "This is touching off a high degree of vigilance among its neighbors," it said. The report touched on the controversy over Japanese leaders paying homage at Yasukuni Shrine, which enshrines Class-A war criminals along with Japan's war dead, saying Japanese authorities are "becoming evermore undisguised in their moves to distort history." "Should the Japanese reactionaries embark upon the road of aggression, obsessed by the ambition for territorial expansion, far from drawing a due lesson from Japan's past history of aggression, this will only precipitate its miserable end," it concluded. |