The Pentagon has upset patriots by labeling the body of water between Korea and Japan in an exhibition depicting various battles fought during the 1950-53 Korean War as “Sea of Japan” rather than “East Sea.”

Seth Dixon‘s insight:

Earlier this week I posted on whether a group of islands off the coast of Argentina should be called the Falkland Islands or Las Malvinas.  There is some geopolitical significance to which name you ascribe to particular places.  Does it matter if I call the sea to the east of the Korean Peninsula the “East Sea” and if someone else refers to this same body of water west of Japan the “Sea of Japan?”  For many years the Sea of Japan has been the defacto name internationally and South Korean officials have lobbied (quite successfully) to bolster the legitimacy of the name within the media, publishers and cartographers and other governments.  Last summer, a worker in the South Korean government’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs requested that I share some resources that state South Korea’s position(see also this 10 minute video), showing their commitment to this rebranding effort.    

Questions to Ponder: What other places have multiple names?  What are the political overtones to the name distinctions? What are other tricky places on the map where distinct groups would label/draw things differently?  Is the map an ‘unbiased’ source of information? 


Tags: language, toponyms, South Korea, historical, colonialism, cartography.

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