Seoul bars Japanese delegation on mission to claim islands

Aug 1, 2011, 14:12 GMT

Seoul - Three Japanese opposition lawmakers were refused entry to South Korea Monday after attempting a private mission to press Japan's claim to a group of islands in the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea.

The three members of the Liberal Democrat Party (LDP) initially refused to board any flight out of Seoul's Gimpo International Airport but eventually gave up and got on a flight back to Japan after a nine-hour standoff.

They insisted they had come to discuss the issue of the Seoul-administrated Dokdo islands with the government and visit the contested territories, which are called Takeshima in Japan, the Yonhap News Agency said.

Immigration authorities said they feared for the visitors' safety at the hands of activists and invoked legislation allowing them to ban people who pose a threat to national security or public safety. According to media reports, some 400 South Koreans had protested at the airport against the Japanese delegation.

Whether there are to be further diplomatic repercussions over the incident was not immediately clear.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said earlier his government was unable to accept the South Korean response to the attempted visit.

The three parliamentarians - Yoshitaka Shindo, Tomomi Inada and Masahisa Sato - had been urged to postpone their visit by their own party. LDP leader Sadakazu Tanigaki said 'early August will be a delicate period' with important debates in the Diet, or parliament.

At his departure from Seoul, Shindo vowed he would 'return to South Korea later' and reaffirmed Tokyo's claim to the islands, Yonhap said.

The islands, also called Liancourt Rocks, are the easternmost territory under Seoul's administration and lie about halfway between the two countries.

South Korea regained control of the islands in 1945 after 35 years of colonial rule by Tokyo.

The islands have a surface area of 0.2 square kilometres and a current permanent population of three people, according to their South Korea-based website.

The waters surrounding them are rich fishing grounds and thought to contain valuable underground mineral deposits, in particular natural gas.

In March, Seoul lodged a diplomatic protest when Tokyo authorized a school textbook listing the islands as Japanese territory.

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