South Korea conducts military exercises in response to Japan’s claims to the Dokdo Islands

Dec. 23 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The South Korean authorities have carried out a series of military maneuvers this Friday with the aim of “guaranteeing the protection” of the Dokdo islands, also known as Takeshima, after Japan included them in its national security strategy for considering them under its control. sovereignty despite the dispute with the South Korean authorities.

Thus, the South Korean Navy and Coast Guard have carried out a series of exercises in the area to “increase the country’s combat readiness in the face of a possible incursion of foreign forces on the islands in question,” according to the agency. Yonhap News.

South Korean forces have carried out similar exercises in the area since the 1980s and, since 2003, they have been carried out twice a year. The disputed islands are located between Japan and South Korea, and came under South Korean jurisdiction after World War II.

However, Japan has referred on numerous occasions to this situation as an “illegal occupation” of the islands, which it considers part of its Shimane prefecture.

For this reason, it has proposed to Seoul to take the matter before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), something to which South Korea refuses since it considers that such a dispute does not exist and that the islands are South Korean territory.

After the announcement of the new Japanese national security strategy, the South Korean Foreign Ministry has stressed that the Japanese government “must realize once and for all that repeating falsehoods about the Dokdo do not help our future relations at all.”