SEOUL: South
Korean forces began two days of expanded drills yesterday around an island also
claimed by Japan, prompting a protest from Tokyo only days after Seoul said it
would scrap an intelligence-sharing pact with its neighbor amid worsening
relations. Tokyo and Seoul have long been at loggerheads over the sovereignty
of the group of islets called Takeshima in Japanese and Dokdo in Korean, which
lie about halfway between the East Asian neighbors in the Sea of Japan, also
known as the East Sea.

The latest
military drills began yesterday and included naval, air, and army forces, as
well as marines, a South Korean ministry of defense official said. The Japanese
foreign ministry called the drills unacceptable and said it had lodged a
protest with South Korea calling for them to end. The island is "obviously
an inherent part of the territory of Japan", Kenji Kanasugi, the director
general at the ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, told the South
Korean Embassy in Tokyo in a statement.

Ko Min-jung, a
spokeswoman for South Korea's presidential Blue House, said the drill was an
annual exercise and not aimed at any specific country. "It's an exercise
to guard our sovereignty and territory," she told reporters in Seoul. The
exercise included significantly more South Korean forces than previously
involved and spanned a wider area in the sea between South Korea and Japan, a
South Korean navy official said.

For the first time
the drills included an Aegis-equipped destroyer and army special forces, the
official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of
the issue. Tensions in the region have spiked amid a worsening political and
economic spat between South Korea and Japan, a string of missile launches by
North Korea, and increasingly assertive military patrols by China and Russia.
South Korea announced the scrapping of an intelligence-sharing pact with Japan
on Thursday, drawing a swift protest from Tokyo and deepening a decades-old
dispute over wartime history that has hit trade and undercut security
cooperation over North Korea.

Relations between
South Korea and Japan began to deteriorate late last year following a
diplomatic row over compensation for wartime forced laborers during Japan's
occupation of Korea. They soured further when Japan tightened its curbs on
exports of high-tech materials needed by South Korea's chip industry, and again
this month when Tokyo said it would remove South Korea's fast-track export
status.

The disputed
islands have long been one of the most sensitive areas of contention between
Japan and South Korea. A detachment of South Korean guards has been stationed
there since the 1950s and South Korea has conducted annual defense drills in
the area. The current exercises had been delayed as relations deteriorated,
Yonhap news agency reported. In July, South Korea and Japan responded to what
they saw as a violation of their air space near the islands by a Russian
military plane.

The South Korean
navy said the drills were designed to underscore its commitment to defending
the broader area. "The military has changed the name of the drills to
'East Sea Territorial Protection Exercise' reflecting the scale and meaning of
the drills to solidify the military's resolve to protect the territory in the
East Sea," the South Korean navy said in a statement. Previous drills had
been called the "Dokdo Defense Exercise." - Reuters