US portal indicates Ulleung Island as territory of Japan
A map of U.S. educational portal site Facts on File indicates Korea’s Ulleung Island as Japanese territory.
By Kim Tae-gyu
An authoritative educational United States portal site indicated Korea’s Ulleung Island on the East Sea as Japanese territory.
Infobase Publishing recorded the rocky steep-sided island as Japanese soil while omitting Korea’s easternmost islands Dokdo in a map on its educational website, Facts on File.
This raised the ire of Koreans, as even Japan does not claim sovereignty over Ulleung Island although it has done so over Dokdo.
“I have hardly found any books or internet sites that show Ulleung Island as belonging to Japan. It is regrettable that a popular educational portal does so,” Voluntary Agency Network of Korea (VANK) founder Park Gi-tae said on Friday.
“We requested Infobase Publishing to correct the evident mistake. We also asked it to identify the waters between Korea and Japan as the East Sea, not just Sea of Japan. The blunders should be rectified as soon as possible because so many refer to the data.”
More than 10,000 Korean citizens currently live on the 72.9-square-kilometer Ulleung, the country’s ninth-largest island. The body of water surrounding the island is dubbed the East Sea in Korean while it is known in English as the Sea of Japan.
Dokdo is a set of volcanic outcrops located about 90 kilometers east of Ulleung Island. Although it is under the strict control of Korea with maritime police officers stationed there, Japan has not stopped claiming its ownership.
In particular, the Shinzo Abe administration strengthened the initiative on Dokdo, which has abundant fishing resources and minerals, through a series of controversial maneuvers to fray the already-strained relationship between the two neighbors.
Along with the wartime sex slavery issue, Dokdo has been a bone of contention between the two countries of late. But even the nationalistic government of Japan has never claimed Ulleung Island.
Park said that Tokyo’s proactive diplomatic activities to claim Dokdo seemingly resulted in the Infobase Publishing flounder and demanded that the Korean government put forth efforts to counter that.
Infobase Publishing is a well-known publisher of reference books, textbooks and imprints. Its books and data are widely used in North American libraries, secondary schools and universities.
Park noted that U.S. high school student Yoon Chae-young, an ethnic Korean and a member of VANK, first found the error.
VANK is a non-governmental organization dedicated to promoting a positive image of Korea. With about 130,000 members, it carries out various projects such as requiring foreign websites to correct false data about the nation.