Japanese officials have asked China to protect Japanese citizens and businesses amid anti-Japanese protests that are breaking out in China after nationalist Japanese activists landed on the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. In South Korea, officials have rejected Japanese calls for international arbitration over the status of the disputed Dokdo/Takeshima Islands less than two weeks after South Korean President Lee Myung Bak made the first ever presidential visit to the islands. Meanwhile, the United States has called on Japan and China to deal with their dispute via dialogue, rather than provocation, and is quietly urging South Korea and Japan to put aside their maritime dispute. After months of tensions in the South China Sea centered on perceived Chinese assertiveness, attention has shifted north, with Japan at the center of controversy. Maritime disputes in Asia are nothing new.