The chairman of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee said “Dokdo” is the right name to refer to South Korea’s easternmost islets, rejecting Japan’s long-running claims that the East Sea islets are its own.

“It’s another one of those issues where we have to understand history and what abuses occurred because it is relevant to our understanding today,” Rep. Ed Royce (R-California) said in an interview with Yonhap News Agency earlier this week. “The proper name is Dokdo island.”

Japan’s claims to Dokdo have long been a key thorn in relations between Seoul and Tokyo, along with other issues stemming from Tokyo’s 1910-45 colonial rule, such as Japan’s enslavement of Korean women as sex slaves for its troops.

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.

Seoul has been keeping a small police detachment on Dokdo since 1954.

It is considered unusual for the U.S. House Foreign Affairs committee chief to openly reject Japan’s claims to the islets. The U.S. government has not taken any side on the issue, leaving the matter to Seoul and Tokyo to sort out.

Royce, who has been reelected the committee’s chairman for the incoming Congress, is considered one of the “pro-Korean” U.S. lawmakers. He has led a series of legislation and resolutions on issues related to South and North Korea.

During the interview, he urged Japan to face up to history, especially the issue of sex slaves, known as “comfort women.”

“We should all just admit history as it occurred. The part of getting the future right is acknowledging what went wrong in the past,” he said. “And this issue with respect to the comfort women, the treatment of the comfort women and the acknowledgement of the human rights abuses that occurred there is one of those issues.” (Yonhap)

Royce has also introduced legislation calling for strengthening financial sanctions on North Korea. The bill ― H.R. 1771 or the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act ― passed through the House in July and awaits approval from the Senate.

But chances of its Senate passage appear slim as only two weeks are left in the outgoing Congress. Should the legislation be scrapped without Senate approval, Royce said he would make sure to introduce it again in the new Congress.

Royce, who has also expressed strong interests in North Korea’s human rights problem, hailed the U.N. Commission of Inquiry’s report on the issue, saying it caused worldwide attention to the problem. He also said that the United States, South Korea and Japan should work together to put pressure on Pyongyang. (Yonhap)