Maritime disputes seem to dot the entire coastline of East Asia. In the south, nations bicker over the status of the South China Sea. In the East China Sea, Japan and China squabble over who truly owns the Senkaku / Diaoyu Islands. In the Sea of Japan, Japan and Korea argue over which country Takeshima / Dokdo really belongs to. The disputes include the islands' names, which change depending on the country.

And in the north, Japan is also in a controversial and seemingly endless spat with Russia over the Kuril Islands, which it calls the Northern Territories -- a chain of 18 volcanic islands that span from the northern tip of Japan's Hokkaido Island to the southern tip of Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula. Russia administers all 18 of the islands, but Japan claims that the southernmost four are being held illegally and should be returned.

A visit this week by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to the Southern Kurils has drawn anger from Tokyo. Protection and development of the Far East was a major pet project of Medvedev in his previous capacity as Russian president, also an effective means of building his nationalistic credentials.

The Russian prime minister said Tuesday that the islands are "our territory which should develop just like the mainland of our country," before his departure to Kunashir (known as Kunashiri in Japan), the southernmost island in the chain, and therefore the one closest to Japan.

Russia is now embarking on a major initiative to strenghten its eastern provinces. Medvedev has promised funding to develop the Kurils' infrastructure and boost defenses. The government is also exploring subsidizing air travel in the area to overcome the difficulty of transportation across vast distances (the Kurils are 4,100 miles, or 6,600 kilometers, by air from Moscow.) Russia is eager to tap into the vast resources of its Far Eastern provinces, rich in fisheries, timber, minerals and hydrocarbons. But the area is sparsely populated and long neglected by the capital.

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"We have to develop new investment projects, including those with the participation of foreign firms," said Medvedev.

In a gesture showing the importance it now places on the region, the Russian government has recently created a new Ministry for the Far East. In a meeting with the regional governments of Eastern Russia on Monday, Medvedev noted that "over the past five years more than 300 billion rubles [$9.3 billon] of federal budget funding have been allocated for projects that form part of the targeted program to develop the Far East and the Trans-Baikal Territory and over 110 billion [$3.4 billion] additional rubles will be allocated over the next two years."

Another photo-op: The Russian PM ready to board a new train servicing Vladivostok's airport on Tuesday. Photos from Reuters.

This September, Russia will host the APEC Summit in Vladivostok, a port city on the Northern Pacific founded in 1860 as a hub for expanding Russian influence and power into East Asia. (Its very name, in fact, means "rule the East" in Russian.)

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Russia And Japan At Odds Again Over Remote, Energy-Rich Kuril Islands