A naturalized South Korean professor from Japan launched a website on Monday to fight Tokyo’s renewed claims to South Korea’s easternmost islets of Dokdo, a research institute said.

Yuji Hosaka, a naturalized Korean and head of the Dokdo Research Institute of Sejong University, opened the website (www.dokdoandeastasia.com) in three languages ― Korean, Japanese and English.

A fact sheet provided on the website includes an official document released in 1877 by the Meiji government in Japan, which declared Dokdo to not be part of Japan’s territory.

The Japanese government has been withholding the release of the original document while ramping up territorial claims to the South Korean islets.

Hosaka, also a professor at Sejong University, said a handwritten copy of the key document is being displayed for public viewing at a public archive in the Takebashi district in Tokyo.

The website also deals with other thorny issues between Seoul and Tokyo, including the controversial Yasukuni war shrine as well as Japan’s past wartime sexual enslavement of South Korean women.

“I created the website particularly in consideration of Japanese readers,” the Japanese studies professor said. “I am planning to send newsletters to some government and political party officials in Japan as well as other (political) institutions or groups.”

The icy South Korea-Japan relations soured further over the past weekend as Seoul strongly protested Japan’s hosting of Takeshima Day on Saturday. The event, named after the Japanese name of Dokdo, is aimed at stressing the country’s sovereignty claims to the islets.

South Korea rejects Japan’s claims to Dokdo because the country regained its independence from Japanese colonial rule and reclaimed sovereignty over its territories, including Dokdo and many other islands around the Korean Peninsula. South Korea keeps a small police detachment on the islets. (Yonhap)