Sea of Japan vs East Sea

I am quite happy that I have changed my blogging tool with blogspot! The other blogging tool kept on deleting my work so I had to re-write this blog post!

Oh well, I guess I have to restart since this is a interesting dispute to write about! My interest of the East Sea began when I saw the atlas book in my school's library labeling the East Sea as the Sea of Japan. It really didn't make sense to me since I was educated in Korea and the Sea of Japan was called the East Sea in Korea.

I kept reading about this problem and found out that other Koreans have tried hard to change the name of this sea. They have sent complains to map making companies, suggested the United Nations to support their actions and even tried advertising. I guess the process did bring some success. The US military started to use the term "East Coast of the Korean Peninsula".

I guess some of you would wonder why Korea is so sensitive about this matter. I mean its just a minor change in names. However, for Korea which have been colonized by Japan it was a sensitive matter. Koreans have lost a lot from the Japanese colonization. Korea lost land, resources and even now they face the threat of losing their island called Dok-do.

Maybe for a country which have been threaten by many countries for hundreds of years, it might be right for them to have some sensitivity of these kind of matters...

This is the Korean view of the East Sea!

This is the Japanese view of the Sea of Japan!

So, both sides are presented. Although I'm Korean, I just wanted to show the Japanese view as well. My aim is the make more people aware of this issue and decide for themselves to support either country :D