South Korea is refusing to allow a Japanese warship to dock at its port during a joint naval exercise, media said on Tuesday, as ties between the pair remain strained over disputed islands.
Tokyo has lodged a protest with Seoul over the refusal during an exercise that also involves the US and Australia, reports said, with one diplomat calling it “extremely rude”.
The four-nation drill, scheduled to take place on Wednesday and Thursday, is aimed at co-ordinating a response to possible trafficking of weapons of mass destruction, Japanese defence officials said.
In the original scenario, a Japanese vessel was to dock in the city of Busan, but South Korean authorities refused to grant it permission, Japan’s broadcaster NHK said.
The conservative Sankei newspaper reported a similar story, citing a Japanese diplomat in Seoul as saying: “It is extremely rude as a host country of a multi-nation military drill.”
South Korea’s defence ministry denied the reports, saying the Japanese ship decided not to dock at the southern port “based on the agreement” made between the two nations.
“We didn’t reject it... it was agreed that the ship would sail straight from Japan, instead of making a stop at Busan, to the sea where it would join the exercise,” he said.