South Korean navy vessels participate in a defence drill with its air force near Dokdo on the East Sea July 30, 2008. The small cluster of islands is called Takeshima in Japanese. The islands are controlled by South Korea, which has a police presence there. The long-burning dispute over the islands erupted again this month after an official school history guide in Japan referred to the islands as Japanese territory. The dispute took a fresh twist when the US Board on Geographic Names, which refers to them by a third name as the Liancourt Rocks, described the islands as not belonging to any state. The agency earlier had listed the islands as South Korean territory. [Agencies]
