Japan says South Korea's ocean survey 'unacceptable'

TOKYO, (AFP) - Japan has called the deployment of a South Korean survey ship to waters around a group of disputed islets "unacceptable", ratcheting up the pressure in the simmering bilateral row.

Japan "has urged the South Korean government that both countries refrain from conducting oceanographic surveys in waters in which their claims for exclusive economic zones overlap," the foreign ministry said.

In a statement released last week, the ministry said Seoul's plans to conduct a survey around the islands without Tokyo's consent was "incompatible to Japan's position concerning its territorial rights over Takeshima". "The move by South Korea is unacceptable for Japan," it said.

South Korea on Sunday dispatched the ship to survey waters around the islands located in the Sea of Japan, or East Sea, controlled by Seoul but claimed by Tokyo, which are known as Dokdo in Korean and Takeshima in Japanese.

Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso held a teleconference with his South Korean counterpart Ban Ki-moon late Monday and demanded that Seoul cancel or postpone the survey, the ministry said. But Ban told Aso the situation was "severe", the ministry said in a separate statement.

Japan claimed the islets in 1905 after winning a war with Russia, and went on to annex and rule the Korean peninsula from 1910 until its 1945 defeat in World War II. South Korea says Seoul's claim to the islets goes back centuries. Tension between the two countries first mounted over the issue in April when Japan infuriated South Korea by planning its own survey of the islands.

Tokyo said it needed to conduct its study in April so it could submit a counter-proposal to an international oceanographic meeting where Seoul planned to propose Korean names for features on the seabed.

The two countries defused the row after South Korea retracted the proposal and Japan cancelled its survey. Meanwhile Japan also wants to develop a joint missile defense system with the United States as quickly as possible following North Korea's missile tests, the Japanese defense chief said Thursday.

"Along with the establishment of a surveillance radar network, we want to work with the United States to build an interception mechanism as soon as possible," Defense Agency chief Fukushiro Nukaga told parliament, as quoted by Kyodo News.

North Korea fired seven missiles on Wednesday, including a long-range Taepodong-2. All of them fell into the Sea of Japan (East Sea) off the coasts of Russia and North Korea.

Japan is particularly sensitive to missile tests by North Korea, which in 1998 fired a Taepodong-1 missile over Japan into the Pacific, prompting Tokyo and Washington to step up cooperation to build missile defenses.

Japan and the United States signed an agreement in late June to allow them to jointly develop an advanced capability missile interceptor for the ballistic missile defense system.