The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a U.S. think tank, has launched a website on maritime disputes in East Asia that portrays South Korea's easternmost islets of Dokdo as disputed territory.

The portrayal runs directly counter to South Korea's long-held position that Dokdo cannot be subject to territorial dispute and Japan's claims to the East Sea islets, controlled by Seoul since its liberation from Tokyo's colonial rule, are nonsense. 

A promotional video of the CSIS-run website Asia-Pacific Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) showed a map that depicts Dokdo as one of the two red-hot places where territorial disputes are under way, along with the Senkaku or Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea.

The video was shown during the annual Global Security Forum.

"No single region will do more to determine whether the 21st century is a peaceful and prosperous one than East Asia," a narrator said in the video. "States' competing maritime and territorial claims have raised the risk that an isolated incident at sea could become a serious global conflict."

The video also showed a news article, headlined "Japan, Korea trade remarks over disputed islets," with a picture of Dokdo. The narrator said AMTI is an interactive website that aims to promote transparency in maritime East Asia and a source for information, analysis and policy exchange. 

After watching the video, a member of the audience in Tuesday's forum said on condition of anonymity that the narrator didn't make any direct mention of Dokdo, but the video skillfully made viewers believe that Dokdo is a disputed region.

Japan's attempt to lay claims to Dokdo has long been a key thorn in relations between Seoul and Tokyo. South Koreans see those claims as a sign that Japan has not fully repented for its 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

South Korea has rejected Japan's claims over Dokdo as nonsense because the country regained independence from colonial rule and reclaimed sovereignty over its territory, including Dokdo and many other islands around the Korean Peninsula.

U.S. think tanks have been accused of being swayed by financial donations from foreign governments.

In a September article headlined "Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks," the New York Times said that the "money is increasingly transforming the once-staid think-tank world into a muscular arm of foreign governments' lobbying in Washington."

The report also said that the United Arab Emirates is a major supporter of the CSIS and the country "quietly provided" a donation of more than US$1 million to help build the center's new glass and steel headquarters not far from the White House.

Japan has been known for spending a lot of money to back and sponsor Japan-related conferences, seminars and studies in an effort to forge favorable views of the country in the United States so as to advance its national interests. (Yonhap)