I got an interesting email a little while ago from a PR company working on behalf of Korean Consulate General in New York. It’s about the naming dispute over “East Sea” (東海) vs “Sea of Japan” (日本海). Here’s the body of the email:
“The Republic of Korea is asking the US government and map publishers to use the name “East Sea” together with the “Sea of Japan” when referring to the body of water located between the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese Archipelago, over which both Japan and Korea have jurisdiction. This body of water has been called East Sea for over 2,000 years – you can read the historical background here: http://bit.ly/EastSeaMaps
Why is this important?
- When dealing with matters of diplomacy, a name reflects how a country is viewed.
- Support for Korea’s position is gaining momentum among many internationally respected cartographers and the media. National Geographic, Rand McNally, The Economist, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, and Le Monde have all begun using both names concurrently.
- Other evidence of growing support for Korea’s position includes a vox populi petition to the White House with more than 100,000 signatures, and a vote at an international organization’s recent conference that denied Japan’s proposal to use only the Sea of Japan name.”
Read more at: http://bit.ly/EastSea
Personally I do think naming it the East Sea (東海) is by far the most reasonable approach. The diplomacy around this kind of issue can really be so just childish. Giving it a comprise name seems such an obvious solution. No other option is going to suit every party as equally. I’m actually surprised the South Korean government isn’t going the whole way and just asking people to call it the East Sea outright. Perhaps they’re doing this as a preliminary step.
It seems like whenever there’s a stretch of water between two countries there’ll be a dispute about the name of it. In this case it’s actually four countries – South Korea, North Korea, Japan and Russia – so a neutral name like East Sea would be even more appropriate.
Further reading: East Sea naming dispute – Wikipedia
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It’s only accurate for Korea though. From Japan’s point of view it’s the West Sea.
It’s in the east of East Asia, so for the vast majority of countries it makes sense to call it the East Sea.
What Helen says makes sense. It’s not actually a neutral name. It’s also been called the Sea of Japan for a very long time by many countries. There really is no reason for Japan to cave in to nationalists. The only reason some Koreans want it changed is because they despise all things Japanese.
But it doesn’t imply ownership and control like “Sea of Japan” does. “East Sea” makes sense for most of the world because it’s a major sea neatly contained in East Asia. The term “East” might not be entirely neutral, but it’s a big improvement on “of Japan”.
Even though the name East Sea [i]COULD[/i] be interpreted as “a sea in the east of East Asia”, we all know it’s no less neutral than the name Sea of Japan as the origin of the name East Sea derived from the fact that the sea is east to Korea.
If you use both names concurrently, how do you determine which comes first?
To be truly neutral, it should have a completely new name.
I agree in principle, but then we get the kind of compromise which doesn’t make sense for any party involved. Unless we can think of a name that isn’t totally spurious but is still neutral, which is unlikely.