By Park Si-soo
Korea has lodged an informal protest against a U.S. government-funded agency’s suggestion to use Japan’s name for the body of water between the two Asian nations in the world’s most-cited guideline for maps, diplomatic sources said Monday.
The protest came after a U.S. maritime-boundary agency recently notified the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) that it only backed the usage of “Sea of Japan” in the guideline, they said. Britain has echoed the view, they added.
This is the latest setback to the Korean government’s long-time efforts to replace the appellation with “East Sea” in the guideline in what appears to be a campaign to root out one of the longest surviving legacies of Japan’s colonial rule of Korea from 1910 to 1945.
In the first step toward the name replacement, the government has tried to have the area dually named, “Sea of Japan or East Sea” in the guideline for the past two years. An updated version will be published by the IHO in years to come.
A working-level meeting is underway at the IHO to iron out geographical name-related conflicts in the process of updating its hydrographic dictionary, titled Limits of Oceans and Seas.
The latest version was published in 1953. Back then, the government had no chance to take care of the matter due to the 1950-53 Korean War.
Yonhap News Agency reported Monday that U.S. and British experts in the meeting submitted a written suggestion to the IHO that the geographical name of the sea remains intact, citing unidentified diplomatic sources.
The Sea of Japan has been the dominant appellation of the waters, commonly adopted by cartographers. More than 70 percent of world maps refer to the disputed ocean as “Sea of Japan.”
The foreign ministry refused to confirm this, citing the nature of the meeting. “The ongoing meeting is closed-door, so I cannot confirm anything regarding the matter,” said a high-ranking foreign ministry official.
Another official dealing with the issue played down the significance of the reported suggestion by the two Western powers.
“The ongoing meeting is not decisive. Participants in the meeting don’t have any right to decide anything regarding the appellation,” the official said. “The alleged suggestion will be submitted to the IHO general meeting next year merely as background information.”
The general meeting, slated for April next year, will decide how to name the body of water between Korea and Japan through a vote by 80 member countries. The alleged suggestion to the IHO by the U.S. and British experts was not immediately available.
The controversial name of the sea has been one of the two subjects of territorial disputes between Korea and Japan, along with Korea’s easternmost islets of Dokdo.
The controversial suggestion came amid already soured Seoul-Tokyo relations following three right-wing Japanese lawmakers’ attempt to visit Ulleung Island, the closest island to Dokdo. The lawmakers intended to unleash what Koreans call “groundless" allegations that “Dokdo belongs to Japan.”
The Korean government blocked the entry of the three lawmakers from the opposition Liberal Democratic Party at a Seoul airport, citing the Immigration Control Act that enables the government to deny the entry of foreign citizens whose purpose of visiting is “obviously to deal a blow to the country’s public interest and safety.”