North Korea slams Japan’s Tokyo Olympic map showing disputed islands

Beijing – North Korea on Saturday criticized a map on the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Organising Committee’s website that shows a group of islands controlled by South Korea as being part of Japan.

Tokyo regards the islets in the Sea of Japan as being part of Shimane Prefecture, but Seoul has had effective control of them since the 1950s. The islands are called Takeshima in Japan and Dokdo in South Korea.

In a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency, a spokesman for North Korea’s Olympic Committee said the marking on the map was aimed at realizing Japan’s “territorial ambition” and “intolerable provocation violating the sovereignty of the Korean nation.”

The statement referred to the outcroppings as the “Tok Island” in English.

North Korea urged Japan to correct the map, which shows the route of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic torch relay. In April, Pyongyang pledged not to send the country’s team to this summer’s Olympics, scheduled to start Friday amid the pandemic.

South Korea has also called on Japan to correct the map, but Tokyo, which views the islets as an inherent part of its territory, has indicated it will not respond to Seoul’s protest over the map.