Seoul on Sunday slammed the Japanese government’s dispatch of a high-level official to a local event designed to stress its claim to the Korean islets of Dokdo.

The Shinzo Abe administration sent a vice minister-level official for a third straight year since its launch to the “Takeshima Day” ceremony in Shimane Prefecture attended by some 500 politicians, local government officials and residents.

The islets are an “inherent part of Japan’s territory under international law. We will make all-out efforts for a peaceful solution to the problem,” Yohei Matsumoto, a Cabinet Office parliamentary secretary, was quoted as saying at the event.

The Foreign Ministry here called the decision “deplorable,” reiterating that the outcrops were Korean territory “historically, geographically and under international law.”

“The Japanese government’s repeat of this behavior not only attests to its denial of the history of aggression on the Korean Peninsula by imperial Japan, but also marks a retrograde act that questions the sincerity of its proclaimed resolve to open a new relationship with Korea ahead of the 70th anniversary of its normalization,” ministry representative Noh Kwang-il said in a statement.

The territorial row is a perennial thorn in the two old foes’ checkered relations, coupled with Tokyo’s sexual enslavement of Korean women during World War II and recurring falsification of historical descriptions in diplomatic and defense papers, schoolbooks and other documents.

Tension is growing as Abe is expected to unveil yet another revisionist view through a statement on Aug. 15 to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, following Japan’s review last year of the 1993 apology for the sex slavery it forced on women from Korea and other parts of Asia during the conflict.

By Shin Hyon-hee (heeshin@heraldcorp.com)