What's new

East Sea

Japan Sea, Indian Ocean, Gulf Of Mexico ... oh well.

Actually, correcting the name of the Yi Dynasty back to Joseon is much more important I think and should be corrected ASAP.
 
I find it ridiculous to rename it East Sea, as for Japanese it is north or west and for Russians south. Well, we do have the North Sea in Europe, but it goes up to the Arctic, so that's North for about everybody (Norwegians don't complain anyway). It's like if Danish wanted to rename the Baltic the East Sea and the Russians the West Sea, pretexting that they aren't Baltic like Latvians or Lithuanians.

If Korea really wanted to improve its relationship with Japan, it could have ask to call it the Sea of Korea and Japan or East Asian Sea. I am surprised that nobody in the international community proposed any such conciliatory alternative.
 
I think the international community has more urgent things to take care of at the moment.
:)
 
That's interesting. I would say Japan has the legitimate claim on the name of the sea, at least by the article. It's interesting how people can latch onto nitpicky things like that. I guess I myself have done it before, but can't say I've had an international soapbox to broadcast it from. I don't know what to say about the dynasty name. I really don't know the background.
 
Dang blasted.

Just erase the stupid name! Then nobody gets to call it something other than Pacific Ocean which it really is anyway.

hmmm, here's a name ::: Sea of Bickering
 
I don't know if they would like that as much, but hey, at least its not the Sea of Japan/East Sea right? :)
 
John Marchioro gave me permission to quote a post he made on the Honyaku mailing list, I found it very interesting.

----------
[...] My take on this is that there is a deep-seated concern with the proper naming of persons, places, dynasties, and so on, in traditional Chinese civilization, and this concern was directly related to a regime's retaining its mantle of political legitimacy (the famed "Mandate of Heaven"). It was even believed in ancient China that a kingdom or dynasty that was undergoing hardship could recoup its fortunes by changing the name of the monarch/emperor's reign years and the like (including such things as changing the musical scale of the instruments used for court music). And Korea, which was the country in East Asia subjected to the lengthiest and most intense influence of Chinese civilization, inherited this linguistic formalism and its link to political legitimacy.

In modern times, this obsession with the use of proper names as a talisman of political legitimacy has become intertwined with mass nationalism. Leave North and South Korea aside for the moment. Consider the ROC regime on Taiwan instead. For almost 40 years the ROC regime (= the KMT party, which fled mainland China in ignominious defeat in the late 1940s) attempted to maintain the fatuous fiction that it was the legitimate government of all of China. This meant all kinds of absurd formalistic linguisitc nonsense was propagated on Taiwan on a daily basis in the media, in schools, and so on.

Look at a map of China printed in Taiwan in 1980, and you will see that it includes Outer Mongolia as part of China (in accordance with KMT doctrine), gives Nanjing as China's capital, and numerous other absurdities, accepted nowhere else in the world. When English language dictionaries were pirated on Taiwan during this period, they were carefully vetted by KMT censors to make sure that there were no entries for "Mao Zedong", "communism", and so on. Anything published relating to the PRC was prefaced with the derogatory character fei3, meaning "bandit", or gong4fei, meaning "communist bandit". I could give many more examples of this if anyone is interested.

And anyone on Taiwan who refused to go along with these silly linguistic fictions risked all kinds of persecution, including imprisonment, until the ROC government finally woke up to the lunacy of it all in the late 1980s and pulled the plug on this particular industry.

I think that we are dealing with essentially the same kind of nonsense in this South Korean case. Actually, I joked with my wife today that the North Koreans probably call the "East Sea" the "Kim Il-sung Sea", the "West Sea" the "Kim Chong-il Sea", and the "South Sea" the "Great Ju-ch'e Idea Sea". The North Koreans make their southern cousins seem like pikers when it comes to this kind of thing.

My point is not to beat up on the South Koreans, who have a legitimate pride in their country's accomplishments, whose recent ancestors suffered badly under Japanese colonial rule, and who continue to suffer from the division of the peninsula. But I do not see how Korea's lingering historical resentment towards Japan can be addressed and resolved by such petty linguistic nationalism. I cannot believe that intelligent South Koreans think that they will achieve anything by wasting their productive hours spamming sites like Brian's (other than making public nuisances of themselves, that is).

The French have a word for this: nombrilisme. This refers to an "obsession with one's own navel", meaning in this case a French tendency to devote excessive and even morbid attention to the French psyche and so on. But the French are not the only people who suffer from this particular illness.

OK, no flames from outraged South Koreans, please. Afte spending six months living in Seoul this kind of stuff now gives me the hives. It is just as vacuous as Nihonjin-ron. [...]
----------
 
Roh Proposed New Name for East Sea to Japan
In a long-running patriotic spat between Korea and Japan, President Roh Moo-hyun proposed renaming the body of water that divides them the "Sea of Peace", it emerged Monday.
Click to expand...
East Sea first, then Sea of Korea, now Sea of Peace. What is going to be the next.
By the way they have never claimed that Yellow Sea should be called West Sea.

Notice that no single Korean speaks up that the whole thing is just ludiclous.


Link
 
College English Teacher Claims Job Loss Over Dokdo Comments
An American English instructor at a Korean university claimed he was not rehired because of his views on Dokdo, the disputed islets between Korea and Japan, which Tokyo calls Takeshima, in an interview with the Korea Times last week.
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200701/kt2007010720352211980.htm
Click to expand...
You can find guys supporting the Korean point of views even in public colleges here.
The 20 year democracy is not enough for them.
 
Mrjones said:
Whats wrong with east sea ?
Click to expand...
What's wrong is, the mentality that the world should change how to call Sea of Japan simply because Koreans use a different name.

That is "when I'm in Rome Romans should do as I do" arrogance.
 
James, South Korea
Hi. I really want to introduce my country-South Korea-to everyone. As you can see, there is a menu of introducing Japan. Yes, my country is a bit simillar to Japan. However there is a huge difference between two country. So I want to tell you the difference. More importantly, on the internet, I have seen my information on our country, for example, the name of sea is East Sea not Japan Sea. I really want to amend it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/radio/specials/1214_le_world/index.shtml
Click to expand...
Quite interesting that a nationalistic Korean guy picked up James as his name, not Kim or Lee.
Sorry for my ignorance if James is a common name there.
 
Geographically, The East Sea/Sea of Japan is situated between Japan, Korean Penincula and Russia. Calling this sea Sea of Japan makes it look as if it belongs to Japan only, which is not true. Any other name, but not a name like "of A country" (A= Japan, Korea, Russia).East Sea shows it ifrom Korean point of view, but it doestn't point a belonging.

Actually, before it was Yellow sea, I remember from the geography classes.

Quite interesting that a nationalistic Korean guy picked up James as his name, not Kim or Lee.
Sorry for my ignorance if James is a common name there.
Click to expand...
The post is irrelevant to the thread.
 
Korea insists "Japan changed the name such as the Sea of Japan from East Sea illegally in the 20th century". However, it was commonly used in the 19th century when Japan still closed the country, and a name of "the Sea of Japan" appeared in most Western maps.
If Japan is not there, this area of sea is just a part of the Pacific Ocean. 😊
 
窶喇 think that Japan and Korea have the right to call the body of water whatever they want. Likewise, what the English-speaking world calls it is none of their business. Japan can't "illegally" make the rest of the world start calling it the "Sea of Japan."
 
Japan isn't "illegally" making the rest of the world start calling it the "Sea of Japan"; that's just what everyone calls it.

it is obvious that korea just wants it to be called 'east sea of korea' to make themselves look better on the international stage and to aggravate japan. therefore, i see no reason why the name should be changed just for the sake of one country's ridiculous idea. even many american-koreans think this is completely pointless, stupid, and embarrassing for their country.
 

Similar threads

Astroboy
Taking a positive view of the Greater East Asia War
2
Replies
35
Views
15K
caster51
C
E
Whales = "cockroaches of the sea"
2 3
Replies
53
Views
9K
Chi65
C
MadamePapillon
diet differences between east and west
2
Replies
27
Views
8K
Tokis-Phoenix
Tokis-Phoenix
M
Back seat belting.
4 5 6
Replies
134
Views
22K
Davey
Davey
Sarapva
The Sea Shepherd Society names ship "Steve Irwin"
Replies
24
Views
5K
Sarapva
Sarapva
Back
Top Bottom