SOUTH Korean officials have demanded the White House confirm that remarks made by US President Donald Trump are accurate, after they sparked fury among political leaders in the country.

On Thursday the South Korean foreign ministry said it was working to find out whether Chinese President Xi Jinping told Mr Trump that the country “used to be part of China”.

The comments were quoted in a Wall Street Journal interview with the President where he was recounting what the Chinese leader had told him in a recent meeting.

While the comment was not used in the initial article, it was later posted in a transcript online with Trump saying about Xi: “He then went into the history of China and Korea. Not North Korea, Korea. And you know, you’re talking about thousands of years ... and many wars. And Korea actually used to be a part of China.”

A Quartz article later drew attention to it, calling the comment a “glaring historical inaccuracy that has, somehow, not yet enraged South Korea which is usually extremely defensive about suggestions that it is lesser than China or has ever been dependent on it.”

Since then, South Korean media has picked up the comment despite it being dismissed by the foreign ministry as “not worthy of a response” according to news agency Yonhap.

Candidates in the May 9 presidential elections have also demanded answers. Liberty Korea Party candidate Hong Joon-pyo called it a “distortion of history” and an “invasion” of sovereignty.

Democratic Party candidate Moon Jae-in and People’s Party leader Ahn Cheol-soo said it was regrettable in an international setting.

“Whether that is true or not, Korea hasn’t been a part of China for thousands of years and it is an historical fact that the international community acknowledges and no one can deny it,” a foreign ministry official said.

History Professor Kyung Moon Hwang told Quartz despite attempts to place Korea as part of Chinese territory historically this is not technically correct.

The claims are complicated by the fact it’s unclear whether President Trump was quoting the Chinese president verbatim, quoting his interpreter or simply paraphrasing.

However it comes in the wake of confusion over who really speaks for the Trump administration given at times glaring discrepancies between statements from the White House, State Department and the president himself.

That was highlighted by the recent example over the US aircraft carrier Carl Vinson which was reportedly part of an “armada” heading to North Korean waters but was actually found to be near the Indian Ocean days later.

It has also underscored the lack of geopolitical policy experience in the upper echelons of Trump’s team, many of whom come from business backgrounds including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said: “There is nothing for South Koreans to worry about.”

“The heads of the U.S. and China exchanged their views deeply and sufficiently on the issues facing the Korean Peninsula during their summit in Florida and related things have already been disclosed in time.”

The US and South Korea are currently conducting war games on the Korean Peninsula amid escalating tension with North Korea over recent missile tests.