South Korea is conducting a military drill to defend its easternmost islets of Dokdo amid Japan's renewed claims to the territory, military officers said Friday.

The Navy, jointly with the Coast Guard, "are carrying out the two-day drill from yesterday on and around the rocky outcroppings in the East Sea," Yonhap News Agency quoted a Navy officer as saying. "It is designed to deter any trespassers on our territory via a sea or air route." The exercise has been carried out twice a year since 1986, with the latest taking place in November last year despite protests from Japan. Dokdo has been a perennial thorn between the two neighbors with Japan's renewed claims to the islets stoking enmity in South Korea toward its former colonial ruler.

South Korea says Japan's territorial claims to Dokdo are tantamount to Japan's denial of Korea's independence from its 1910-45 colonial rule, as Seoul reclaimed sovereignty over all of its territories, including Dokdo and many other islands around the Korean Peninsula, upon its independence.