CHAPTER 5: EAST SEA
5.2.1 STATE-LED
國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a
tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
oppression, occupation and violence. Just as with the Dokdo dispute, East Sea is an issue that Koreans from a young age are taught to care about through the national education system.
In this sense, the East Sea and Dokdo issues are closely intertwined. The international use of the name “Sea of Japan” is seen as perpetuating the injustice of Japanese colonialism in much the same way that Japan’s claim to Dokdo represents Japan’s reluctance to completely renounce its colonial history. To rectify this perceived injustice - to right this wrong - the Korean government and private Korean citizens are thus steadfast in promoting use of the name “East Sea” in the international community.
5.2 Response
In the previous two case studies, I tried to show how each Korean administration handled the issues of Comfort Women and Dokdo Island from the early 90’s - just when middle power entered Korea’s political discourse - to the Park Geun-hye administration. Because the Korean government’s East Sea initiatives are not confined to individual presidential terms, but are instead are part of a long-term strategy spanning multiple presidential terms, so in this case I’ve decided instead to focus on simply explaining those strategies rather than by breaking up the initiatives by presidential administrations as I did in the previous two chapters. Because private citizens and organizations have been quite active in promoting the East Sea, I’ve included a section to elaborate on that as well.
5.2.1 State-led Initiatives
According to former Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan, South Korea has been engaged in a campaign to have the name Sea of Japan changed to East Sea ever since 1991
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a
tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
(Chosun Ilbo 2011). This campaign has focused on pushing the United Nations and the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) to officially replace the name Sea of Japan, or at least add the name East Sea, on world maps.
The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) is a team of experts working under the United Nations to manage the national and international standardization of geographical names. Every five years these experts convene to hold the United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names (UNCSGN). This international meeting holds discussions to review countries’ policies on the standardization of geographical names and name marking systems.
After being admitted into the United Nations as a full member in 1992, South Korea immediately objected to the name Sea of Japan at the Sixth annual meeting of the UNCSGN (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ROK, East Sea). At every annual meeting since then, delegates from the ROK have repeated the claim that until an agreement is reached between the ROK and Japan, the names “East Sea” and “Sea of Japan” should be used concurrently (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ROK 2017).
The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO), is the central global body set up to support safety of navigation and the protection of the marine environment. The IHO is also responsible for standardizing the world’s maritime place-names, and to that end, holds a major international conference every five years to discuss and settle geographic names and marking systems. The IHO’s nautical chart publication “Limits of Oceans and Seas” (S-23) has used the name “Sea of Japan” since its first publication in 1929.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a
tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
The South Korean government first proposed the East Sea name to the IHO in 1997, stating that the two names “East Sea” and “Sea of Japan” should be used together until an agreement can be reached with Japan (Kim 2017). South Korea has since pushed for the name change at each of the subsequent IHO meetings, and each time the organization has declined to amend the long established name of the sea.
A recent meeting of the IHO was in 2012, and once again they decided not to change the current single name "Sea of Japan" rejecting South Korea's request to use "East Sea" together with "Sea of Japan" In response to this failure of the South Korean campaign over two decades, South Korean foreign minister Kim Sung-hwan suggested that the government should consider more strongly advocating other historical names instead, such as "Sea of Korea” (Chosun Ilbo 2011).
Despite the apparent failure of the UNCSGN and IHO campaigns, South Korea has seen progress in unofficial changes to the name of the sea. This is because the South Korean government has also expended great effort to lobby foreign media outlets, encouraging them to use the dual name “Sea of Japan/East Sea.” A number of prominent publications now employ both terms, including the National Geographic Society, Rand McNally, The Economist, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, and Le Monde (Lewis 2012). In 2008, Google put both names on Google Earth, using East Sea for local Korean servers and Sea of Japan for web users internationally (Li 2010). According to government statistics, the percentage of international maps using the East Sea name alone or along with Sea of Japan rose from 2.8 percent in 2000 to 10.8 percent in 2005, to 23.8 percent in 2007 and then to 28.07 percent in 2009 (Northeast Asian History Foundation 2009: 6). If not an official win for Korea, the steady increase in dual
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a
tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
name usage at the global level at least demonstrates an increased awareness of the dispute, and accommodation of Korea’s claims.
Official and unofficial efforts continue. In February 2017 the ROK Foreign Ministry uploaded a series of promotional videos to its official website which claims, “Japan knows the truth” and calls for greater awareness of the name East Sea (Kim 2017). In April 2017, South Korea sent a delegation made up of 30 government officials and private experts to the most recent IHO meeting. Just as in previous meetings, there goal was to have the waters labeled solely as the “East Sea,” or settle for dual use of "East Sea" and "Sea of Japan" until an agreement is reached on the matter between the two countries (KBS 2017).
It is worth noting that a singular example of compromise was attempted by former Korean President Roh Moo-hyun. In November 2006, during the APEC summit in Hanoi, Roh informally proposed to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that the sea be renamed the "Sea of Peace" or "Sea of Friendship.” Abe, of course, rejected the idea and in the following year Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki reiterated, stating that there was no need to change the name of the Sea of Japan (Japan Times 2007).