By Alex Jensen
SEOUL
South Korea's foreign ministry called in a Seoul-based Japanese envoy Monday to express its disapproval of a ceremony furthering Tokyo's claim to islets that lie in waters between the two countries.
Kenji Kanasugi, a minister from the Japanese Embassy, was summoned a day after an annual event in his country's Shimane Prefecture, according to local news agency Yonhap.
Seoul's foreign ministry had already issued a strongly-worded statement Sunday, which described Tokyo's endorsement of the event by sending a government official as "deeply deplorable."
Every year for a decade, Shimane Prefecture has celebrated Takeshima Day, which promotes Japan's sovereignty over the islets known to Koreans as Dokdo.
The territory lies closer to the Korean Peninsula than Japan, and is effectively controlled by Seoul via a police and small residential presence.
But the issue is one of several thorns in Seoul-Tokyo relations to have survived the decades since the end of Japanese colonial rule in 1945.
South Korea has regularly accused Japan of attempting to whitewash its own "history of aggression," as the foreign ministry put it.
Bilateral ties have continued to suffer since Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took office for a second time at the end of 2012 -- he is yet to successfully persuade South Korean President Park Geun-hye to hold an official summit.
Seoul's official stance was mirrored by South Korean civic groups Monday, as they rallied in their hundreds outside the Japanese Embassy, calling on Tokyo to "stop distorting history."
