Japan Lodges Protest Over S. Korean Maritime Survey Near Disputed Isles

In the Sea of Japan, where history and geography have long refused to settle their differences, a South Korean research vessel lowered equipment into waters that Tokyo considers its own — and the act, quiet as it was, carried the full weight of a dispute that neither nation has been willing to release. Japan's Foreign Ministry delivered a formal protest to Seoul's embassy in Tokyo, not over a military provocation, but over the act of scientific inquiry itself, which in contested maritime space becomes its own form of assertion. The Takeshima and Dokdo islets have divided these two neighbors fo