The textbook, issued by the Japanese Meiji Publishing House on Oct. 1, 1924, contains a "Battle Chart in the Sea of Japan" picturing a sea battle during the Russo-Japanese War.

With an explanation that Japan's warship No. 4 played a flagship in the battle fought at around 10:00 May 28, 1905, the textbook says in its toponym index that the Tok Islets belong to Korea.

As seen above, Tok Islets are an inviolable part of Korea's territory nobody can deny.

Korea was the first to discover the islets and annex them to its territory. It is none other than Korea that re-confirmed and declared its ownership over the islets in line with international law.

This stark fact has already been verified.

In May 2009, an international workshop on the ownership of the islets was held in the United States.

At the workshop, a professor of Hawaii University said that there are data documenting the islets as territory of Silla Dynasty (early mid-1st century A.D. to 935 A.D.), one of the Three Kingdoms in Korea's history. Maps, printed in Japan in the period of the 1700s-1800s, too, evidence that the islets belong to Korea, the professor added. The professor said Japan began to claim their ownership in 1905, adding its claim lacked historical evidences and reasons.

The fact that Tok Islets belong to Korea's territory was already evidenced by Japanese maps and books which were published before the end of the 19th century. They include a copy of the military map made by a Japanese commander, Hisakuni Kawagami, on the instruction of warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the period of the Imjin Patriotic War (1592-1598), the original map on eight provinces of Korea drawn by a Japanese geographer, Shihei Hayashi, in 1785 and a book released by the Japanese Foreign Ministry in 1896.

This goes to prove that Japan had long considered the islets to be a part of Korea's territory.

Japan's persistent claim to the islets is no more than a challenge to Korea's sovereignty.

Some days ago, the Japanese reactionaries dispatched a high-ranking government official to the "celebrations of Takeshima (Tok Islets) Day" sponsored by Shimane Prefecture of Japan and the Japanese foreign minister called for "dominium" over Tok islets in his recent diplomacy speech.

Now the people of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea hardly repress their surging wrath and hatred for the Japanese reactionaries who are persistently seeking to grab the islets, far from making an apology and reparation for the hideous crimes Japan committed against the Korean nation in the past.

The Japanese reactionaries should be mindful that its territorial ambition is a daydream.