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SEOUL: South Korea could stop cooperating with Japan in six-party talks on denuclearising North Korea if their territorial dispute worsens, Seoul's ambassador to Tokyo said Thursday.
South Korea has already rejected a Japanese proposal for foreign ministerial talks next week on the sidelines of a regional security forum in Singapore.
Japan's reaffirmed claim to South Korean-controlled islands in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) has sparked anger and public protests in Seoul, which recalled Ambassador Kwon Chul-Hyun this week.
The furore began when Japan Monday published new educational guidelines calling on students to have a deeper understanding of their country's claim to the islands known as Takeshima in Japan and Dokdo in South Korea.
"The worst thing happened at a time when South Korea and Japan need to cooperate as partners in various aspects internationally," Kwon told reporters.
He said South Korea has been cooperating with Japan in issues arising in six-party talks such as North Korea's past abductions of Japanese citizens.
"If public opinion worsens at home or political circles strongly oppose such cooperation, we have no other choice but to take it into consideration," Yonhap news agency quoted him as saying of the dispute .
The talks group the two Koreas, China, Japan, the United States and Russia. Last weekend, they agreed to work towards the disablement of North Korea's nuclear plants by October.
Japan refuses to contribute to compensatory energy aid for Pyongyang until it fully accounts for Japanese kidnapped during the Cold War era.
In Tokyo, Japan's chief government spokesman voiced disappointment that South Korea rejected an offer of ministerial talks on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum.
"It is disappointing, but I have been told that under the current situation it will be difficult to hold foreign ministerial talks in Singapore," Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said.
Ambassador Kwon refused to predict when he will return to Tokyo.
"I expect Japan to take corrective measures so as to normalise the collapsed diplomatic relations of the two nations," he said. "The most desirable measure is to delete the description from the teaching guidelines."
In continuing protests, about 500 fishermen marched in southern Seoul, carrying national flags and flags with pictures of Dokdo.
"Stop violating our territorial sovereignty," read one banner. "Japan must stop distortion of history," another said.
On Wednesday about 30 labour activists hurled rotten eggs and tomatoes at the Japanese embassy in Seoul.
In the southern city of Busan Thursday an association of civic groups announced a campaign to boycott Japanese cars. The Seoul metro has withdrawn a series of adverts promoting Japanese condoms.
President Lee Myung-Bak took office in February promising a new start in frequently prickly relations with former colonial power Japan.
When he met Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda in Tokyo in April, the two leaders agreed to focus on the future rather than on Japan's brutal 20th century colonisation of the Korean peninsula.
However ambassador Kwon told the Munhwa Ilbo newspaper on Wednesday that the row could lead to the cancellation of a visit by Fukuda to Seoul this autumn.
South Korea stations a small unit of maritime police on the rugged and treeless islands to assert its sovereignty.
- AFP/os
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