Korea’s, ahem, well-known cyber-diplomacy group Volunteer Agency Network of Korea (VANK) is concerned that the U.S. media, including the New York Times, are “mistakenly” marking the body water between the Korean Peninsula and Japan as the “Sea of Japan” rather than “East Sea.” And the Kyunghyang Shinmun shares their concerns:
It has been revealed that major U.S. media like the New York Times are mistakenly marking the “East Sea” as the “Sea of Japan” on the maps in their stories on the North Korean nuclear test. In particular, some point out that with world attention focusing on whether North Korea conducted a second nuclear test, you can’t ignore the repercussions resulting from the mistaken markings.
The humanity! A VANK official demanded government action, complaining:
There are some foreign press sites that have made corrections because our members have persistently sent them emails, but in the case of major media, there is a limit to private-level efforts because those media follow the names decided by their nations’ academic societies or government bodies.
Glad they got their priorities straight.
11 Comments
Fifth column.
I don’t think this is the appropriate time for such trivial bickering.
The arrogance implicit in that “mistakenly” is breathtaking, as if the Koreans can arbitrarily decide the one right way to name the sea - a way that makes sense only from where the Koreans are standing, I might add.
Sea of Japan. Sea of Japan. Sea of Japan. Deal with it.
I knew it! There was a Korean guy complaining on the New York Times Blog about commenters and the NY Times using Sea of Japan instead of the East Sea on the site. I figured the guy was one of those stupid VANKers. You can always count on VANKers to remind us in times of crisis of what is really important.
Everyone knows it’s the Sea of Japan. Why can’t they get over it?
In one of my favorite watering holes, this subject came up and I said it’s obviously the Sea of Japan. Always has been and always will. One of my Korean friends got a little upset and said how would your country react to a body of water on your shore that was named after another country?
I replied….”You mean like the Gulf of Mexico?”
He shut up.
You could have mentioned the Korea Bay bordering China too
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_Bay
Oh wait, I thought Sea of Japan wasn’t reasonable because it implies ownership and you can’t own a body of water. Perhaps changing the name from Sea of Japan to Japan Bay would demote the size of the body of water and make it more acceptable
I once was talking to a chica and she asked what if the Atlantic were called the English Ocean. I said I wouldn’t care too much, what with the Gulf of Mexico already being to our south. “What???” was the inarticulate reply.
Only someone with an inferiority complex cares about what bodies of water are called, and the VANKers complex is ocean-sized.
And is it just me, or does the Sea of Japan actually seem Japanese? I don’t know, just a…majestic quality to it.
Actually, the issue is not about sharing a geographic boundary named after one or another country (or part of that country). The issue is sharing a geographical boundary named after one party and *caring*. The US has never made an issue of the Gulf of Mexico.
To quote the the third UN Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names from 1977, from “Names of Features beyond a Single Sovereignty”. The resolution recommended:
“when countries sharing a given geographical feature do not agree on a common name, it should be a general rule of cartography that the name used by each of the countries concerned will be accepted.”
But, obviously, caring about the name of a body of water when someone is testing nukes next door is stupid to the extreme. Like noticing a bad paint job on your apartment building’s seventh floor while plummeting to earth from the 20th.
Hey, don’t forget Lake Ontario….hmmm, I mean, yeah, the Bay of Mexico. Did I mention that I love my southern neighbors?
There really ought to be something in that rule that would stop a country from suddenly caring (and making a big stink) over a name that they’ve accepted (and used) for years.
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[...] Fresh from bringing us startling news that the New York Times was defacing its maps with the “Sea of Japan,” the Kyunghyang Shinmun reports that the greatest beneficiary of North Korea’s recent nuke test was—you guessed it—Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Thanks to Kim Jong-il’s theatrics, Abe was able to push the thorny history issue aside during his summits with Hu Jintao and Roh Moo-hyun. And, of course, it helps his ambition to turn Japan into a military power. [...]