South Korea said Friday it would tighten its hold over disputed islets in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) as the Japanese foreign minister said frayed diplomatic relations were keeping Tokyo from ending the row over Japan's claim to the remote territory.
"For the moment, there is nothing we can do. It is difficult even at the diplomatic front to have calm dialogue," Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said.
A visit by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to Seoul during the first half of this year could be delayed amid rising tensions, Machimura said.
During a summit in July 2004, Koizumi and South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun agreed to visit each other every six months. Roh visited Japan in December.
South Korean police said sea patrols and aerial surveillance would be stepped up around the disputed islets of Dokdo, known as Takeshima in Japanese.
A 41-member South Korean police detachment stationed on Dokdo would also receive new heavy machine guns to replace outdated ones, police said.
"In order to protect the sovereignty over Dokdo lying on the easternmost front, we will step up security and modernize weaponry there," said Huh Joon-Young, head of the National Police Agency.
Dokdo is a cluster of two main islets and dozens of attached rocks and reefs, located 89 kilometers (56 miles) southeast of Uleungdo, and 160 kilometers west of the nearest Japanese territory of Oki Island.
On Friday a 54-year-old activist identified only as Huh was taken to hospital and treated for burns to his thighs, knees and palms after setting himself ablaze during a protest outside the Japanese embassy here, hospital authorities said.
The protest was the latest by South Koreans angry at Japan's claim to the islands. Japan's Shimane prefecture on Wednesday established an annual "Takeshima" day to bolster the claim, and South Korea says the Japanese claim amounts to an assault on South Korean independence.
Machimura said on Thursday that Tokyo understood South Korea's anger but urged the two neighbors to look more broadly at their relations and called for "self-restraint and respect" between them.
But South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon urged Japan to take action instead of talking to defuse the row, while Unification Minister Chung Dong-Young said Japan did not understand South Korean rage over Japan's brutal 1910-1945 occupation of the Korean peninsula.
"It was Japan that brought up the issue and tried to justify its past through distortion," he said.
A new Japanese history textbook awaiting publication, which Seoul and Beijing say glosses over Japan's wartime aggression, has also stoked south Korean anger.
Earlier this month Roh said Japan should apologize and offer compensation for atrocities against Koreans.
But Machimura said Japan felt no need to compensate Seoul further for its past atrocities against Koreans.
"We need to recognize humbly the historical fact that our country inflicted tremendous damage and sufferings to the peoples of Asia, and have deep understanding and sympathy for the South Korean people's feeling," he said.
Tokyo considers its obligations to South Korea fulfilled by the signing of a normalization treaty in 1965 and its providing Seoul with 800 million dollars in loans and grants.
Relations had been improving recently between Seoul and Tokyo, which designated 2005 as "friendship year" to mark the 40th anniversary of the 1965 normalization treaty.
But the territorial dispute inflamed rising nationalism in South Korea and revived lingering bitterness about Japanese colonial rule.