A sea by any other name

Japan and South Korea are embroiled in a row over what to call the stretch of water that divides them, writes Jonathan Watts
The warm glow generated between Japan and South Korea from co-hosting the World Cup has cooled and dimmed somewhat in the past week over a feud about what to call the stretch of water that divides the two neighbours.

After the football festivities in June passed as smoothly as anyone could have dared hope, the Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, and the South Korean president, Kim Dae-jung, pledged to use the success to improve bilateral ties.

But the limits of such goodwill have become apparent in one of the world's lesser known international forums, the International Hydrographic Bureau (IHB), which outlines maritime boundaries.

After a meeting of the IHB earlier this month, the two sides slipped back to their old antagonistic ways in a row that has seen them use western colonial maps in support of their own national agendas.

The dispute concerns the English name of the waters between the Korean peninsular and the Japanese archipelago that the government in Tokyo calls the Sea of Japan, citing maps written by Catholic priests and European explorers dating back to the 17th century.

Although this name was first given by westerners seeking trade markets and religious converts, South Korea complains that it also harks back to Japan's own imperial past - the colonisation of the peninsular from 1910 to 1945. During that occupation, Korean citizens were forced to adopt Japanese names and speak the Japanese language.

With the scars still sore today, South Korea is sensitive to any name that it feels has been imposed by Japan. South Korea uses East sea on its own maps and has lobbied hard in recent years for other nations and international organisations to do the same. This campaign has picked up since 1992, when the UN launched a move to standardise the world's geographic names.

South Korean government officials and scholars have taken the message to the US and published studies to argue their case. Foreign journalists visiting Seoul are presented with free poster-sized maps of the region, which include an argument in favour of East sea.

To the horror of Japan, the campaign made a major breakthrough earlier this month, when the International Hydrographic Bureau proposed dropping Sea of Japan from its charts, meaning the waters would have no officially recognized international name.

The plan may have been intended as a compromise, but it has riled Tokyo. "This situation is like if Madagascar got into a fight with India and said that Indian ocean' is an outrageous name and started using, Madagascar ocean," said Yo Iwabuchi, deputy chief of international affairs at Japan's maritime safety agency.

With the 70 member nations of the IHO, due to vote on the proposal at the end of November, Japan has launched a counter-offensive. At a UN conference on the standardisation of geographical names in Berlin on August 27, Japanese delegates will distribute hundreds of copies of a historical research paper it has commissioned on the issue.

The study of 200 old charts indicates that Sea of Japan first appeared on a map written by an Italian missionary in the 17th century. It became common on European maps from the 19th century, when Japan was a closed nation with almost no diplomatic ties to other countries.

Korea argues that the waters have also been called the East sea, the Sea of Korea, the Sea of China and the Oriental sea. "The Korean government deems it inappropriate to name that sea after a single country because it is historically unjustified and causes unnecessary discord among neighbouring countries," Kim Myong-sik, assistant minister of South Korea's Information Service, said.

The row looks like going on for some time, but the experience of the World Cup may offer a glimmer of hope for a peaceful resolution. During preparations for the tournament, the two sides clashed over which country's name should appear first in the official title of the event. It was an ugly encounter - at one point prompting Fifa executives to call on them both to cool off for a while - but it did not stop the tournament from being a success.

Equally, the Sea of Japan/East sea feud should not get in the way of progress in the wider field of bilateral relations.