South Korea on Saturday slammed Japan for commemoration of the controversial "Takeshima Day" to claim the islets known as Dokdo in South Korea, and Takeshima in Japan, that lie midway between the two nations.

"The Japanese government illegally incorporated the Dokdo islets in its territory in 1905 when the Imperial Japan rushed to disseize the Korean Peninsula, calling Dokdo as islets nobody owns. Now it is laying far-fetched claim to Dokdo, saying the islets have originally belonged to inherent part of Japan's territory," Seoul's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The denunciation came after Japan's Shimane prefectural government held the annual commemoration of the Takeshima Day, which was set up in 2006 by the local government to lay territorial claim to the islets.

Japanese government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sent a vice ministerial-level official to the event for the second year in a row. This year, Yoshitami Kameoka, a parliamentary secretary in the Cabinet Office, attended the ceremony along with 16 Japanese lawmakers.

The prefectural government has marked the "Takeshima Day" on February 22 since 2006.

South Korea has effectively been controlling the islets since Japanese colonial rule on the Korean Peninsula ended in 1945.

In August 2012, then South Korean President Lee Myung-bak visited the easternmost islets, prompting the Japanese government official attendance in the commemoration of the Takeshima Day six months later.

Hundreds of protestors gathered in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul to protest the celebration of the Takeshima Day.

Rival political parties in South Korea condemned the ceremony as justifying and glorifying its past colonial rule and war of aggression.

In addition, South Korean foreign ministry denounced Japan's attempt to retract its past apology to "comfort women" for coercing them into sex slavery for Japanese military during World War Two.

The ministry said that Japan marked the provocative Takeshima Day just two days after Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga indicated an overall review over interviews with 16 South Korean comfort women, who identified themselves as sex slaves during the Second World War.

The interviews were conducted in 1993 by Japanese officials in Seoul for five days, resulting in the Kono Statement, an official apology made by then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono later that year for its coercion of more than 200,000 young women into sex slavery during Japanese colonial rule of Asia.

Among 237 South Korean women who identified themselves as former sex slaves, only 56 are alive.

The ministry said that Kono has already acknowledged the forced wartime sex servitude, noting that UN reports in 1996 and 1998 concluded the sexual slavery was forced through violence and abduction.

It urged the Japanese government to humbly accept criticism from the international community for inciting historical denial, collective amnesia and nationalism.

Japanese rightists have insisted that there was no official document to prove the "forcible" conscription of comfort women, seeking to discredit the testimonies by the South Korean sex slaves. The first cabinet headed by Shinzo Abe from 2006 to 2007 had maintained such position.

Ties between Seoul and Tokyo have been strained since Abe returned to power in December 2012. Abe infuriated its Asian neighbors by visiting the notorious Yasukuni Shrine in December 2013, as it honors 14 convicted class-A war criminals during World War Two.

US Secretary of State John Kerry called for the two US allies to mend ties during his visit to Seoul last week, saying that South Korea and Japan can "put history behind and move relations forward." The US top diplomat's remarks came ahead of President Barack Obama's trip to Asia in April.

Following Kerry's visit, senior foreign ministry officials from South Korea and Japan held talks in Seoul Tuesday, but the South Korean foreign ministry spokesman played down importance of the meeting.