Tokyo on Friday dismissed accusations that Japan Coast Guardsmen used excessive force when they boarded a South Korean boat suspected of poaching and roughed up one of its crew members.
"I think they acted correctly," Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said when asked if the coast guardsmen had acted unreasonably.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported that a member of the fishing boat crew was hospitalized with injuries after he was beaten by Japanese authorities during the confrontation Wednesday.