LONG BEFORE PRESIDENT Kim Dae-jung shocked the world by visiting Pyongyang and embracing North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, the animosity between the two Koreas was tempered by one thing they had in common: both disliked the fact that the body of water between Japan and the Korean peninsula was known to the world as the Sea of Japan.
For many years, South Korea had, like Don Quixote, been tilting at windmills, trying to have the international community use a different name.
The South Korean government campaigned in the United Nations, while Korean NGOs such as the Voluntary Agency Network of Korea (Vank) wrote to the CIA World Factbook, as well as Web sites, asking that the name be changed to the East Sea. At the same time, North Korea mounted a similar, though apparently unco-ordinated, campaign. Both argued he sea to the east of the Korean peninsula should be known as the East Sea.
The Koreans insisted that the colonisation of Korea by the Japanese had led to that body of water being known as the Sea of Japan. Long before Japan colonised Korea in 1910, the Koreans said, they had used the name East Sea. They cited historical writings going back 2,000 years.
Historical writings
The Japanese assert that the name Sea of Japan has been in use internationally since the late 18th century and was unrelated to Korea's colonisation. They pointed out that 97 per cent of maps worldwide use the name Sea of Japan.
By and large, Japan didn't pay much attention to the Korean campaign - until August. That was when it became known that the Monaco-based International Hydrographic Organisation (IHO), the arbiter of maritime geographical names, had decided to omit the name Sea of Japan from the draft guidelines for the fourth edition of its publication, The Limits of Oceans and Seas, due to be published next year.