South Korea strongly protested Japan's renewed claims to South Korea's easternmost islets of Dokdo in its newly created defense white paper for elementary and junior high school students, the foreign ministry said Monday.

Lee Sang-ryeol, the director-general for Asia Pacific affairs, and Kim Yong-gil, minister at the South Korean Embassy in Tokyo, lodged a protest to Naoki Kumagai, deputy chief of mission at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, and Taisuke Mibae, deputy director-general of the Japanese foreign ministry's Asian and Oceanian affairs, respectively.

"They said that in light of our position that Dokdo is our inherent territory historically, geographically and by international law, the claims can never be accepted, and urged Japan to immediately delete the document," the ministry said in a text message to reporters.

Earlier in the day, Tokyo's defense ministry unveiled the 30-page white paper for young people on its website. A map on the policy document indicated Dokdo as part of Japan's territory.

Dokdo has long been a recurring source of tension between the two neighbors, as Tokyo continues to make the sovereignty claims in its policy papers, public statements and school textbooks.

South Korea has been in effective control of Dokdo, with a small police detachment, since its liberation from Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule. (Yonhap)