A front-page story in the Washington Post's Friday edition characterizes the Dokdo islets as "outposts of national pride" for Korea.

The article describes the islets, to which Japan maintains a flimsy claim, as "poking up from the sea like rabbit ears," and highlights the islands' only mailbox, which shows a Korean address.

The paper focused of the islets' only residents, a Korean fisherman and his wife, and the 3G cellphone service they enjoy to illustrate the "show of Korean control."

The fisherman and some of the 45 Korean police officers charged with defending the islets told the reporter they would "defend the island to the death."

The Korean government organized a helicopter tour of Dokdo earlier this week for a dozen foreign journalists from the Washington Post, CNN and the BBC among others. The trip was designed to underscore Seoul's control of Dokdo.

The Post said the Japanese government objected to the tour, quoting a foreign ministry spokesman as saying that it is "not a domestic trip, but an international trip crossing the border between Japan and Korea."