South Korea on Thursday strongly denounced Japan for the latter's campaign to lay claim to a group of islets located in the Sea of Japan through revising school textbooks.

"An analysis of 55 kinds of Japan's high school textbooks on geography, history, and social affairs for next year reviewed by the Japanese Education Ministry showed that 20 of them include distorted descriptions of Dokdo as a territory of Japan," South Korea's Foreign Ministry spokesman Choo Kyu-ho said in a statement.

It reflects the Japanese government's intention of glorifying its wartime past and teaching distorted history to students, the spokesman said.

The statement came one day after the Japanese Education Ministry released the results of its annual review of new high school textbooks that will be introduced in 2007.

The controversial islets, called Dokdo in Korean and Takeshima in Japanese, always is the fuse of diplomatic disputes between the two neighboring countries.

"The (South Korean) government urges the Japanese government to repeal its intolerable claims to South Korea's territory of Dokdo... The government once again clarifies its position to deal sternly with the issue in terms of territorial protection," the strongly-worded statement said.

It also questioned Japan's willingness to develop the friendly relations with South Korea and seek regional peace and co-prosperity.

South Korea insists that the Dokdo islets, located some 89 kilometers southeast to South Korean Uleung Island and 160 kilometers northwest to Japanese Oki Island in the Sea of Japan, have been listed as its territory in history literature since the fifth century.

While Japan also claims the islets has been its territory since the 17th century, as written in literature.

Japan started annexation of the Korean Peninsula in early 20th century and completed it in 1910.

After liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945, the first South Korean President Lee Seung-man issued a presidential declaration on the dominion over the coastal sea and sovereignty over Dokdo in January 1952. And Seoul has deployed coast police on the islets since 1954.

The two sides also have deep differences over the name of the Sea of Japan, as South Korea insists that it should be called as "East Sea."

The territorial dispute has deepened since a Japanese prefecture last year designated Feb. 22 as "Takeshima Day."

It also reported that South Korea's Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon plans to call in Japanese Ambassador to Seoul Shotaro Oshima later in the day to lodge a complaint over the issue.

It seemed the latest development may further deteriorate bilateral relations between the two countries, which were already worsened by a series of disputes over history issue and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's repeated visit to a controversial shrine.

(Xinhua News Agency March 30, 2006)