Japan has launched a diplomatic offensive to foil South Korea's attempt to rename the ocean separating the Asian neighbors from "Sea of Japan" to the "East Sea," saying the weight of history is on the Japanese side. Wading into sensitive political waters, the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) this month agreed to a request by South Korea to delete a page covering the "Sea of Japan" from draft guidelines used by publishers to draw nautical maps.
Outraged Japanese officials demanded the Monaco-based IHO, an inter-governmental body that promotes sea safety, scrap the planned change to its signature publication The Limits of Oceans and Seas, saying Japan could "never accept" such a revision.
The IHO, which wants to avoid inflaming historic rivalries that date back to Japan's harsh colonial rule of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945, will make a final decision by the end of November after a vote by its 72 member countries.
But the IHO's first map revision since 1953 looks set to plunge Seoul and Tokyo into a diplomatic spat just as the afterglow begins to fade from a successful co-hosting of the World Cup soccer finals in June.
Japan says the "Sea of Japan" has been used in almost all maps produced and used throughout the world since the late 18th century. Lobbying by South Korea to change the name began in 1992 with a proposal to the UN. "It is wrong for South Korea to make that claim which we can never accept," a Japanese official said.
The official said Japan had recently conducted research on more than 200 old maps produced in Europe and found that the "Sea of Japan" had first appeared in a map drawn by an Italian missionary in the early 17th century.
It also found that while several other names such as "Sea of China," "Sea of the Orient" and "Sea of Korea" were also used until the 18th century, "Sea of Japan" has been accepted as a legitimate name since then, he said.
But South Korea argues that Japan's military occupation of the Korean peninsula set the stage for the "Sea of Japan" to be commonly used in modern times.
If Japan loses the battle, the "Sea of Japan" could be deleted from the revised edition of the IHO guidelines due out next year, another Japanese Foreign Ministry official said.
Japan and South Korea have also been locked in a feud over a group of small rocky islets, known as Takeshima in Japan and Tokdo in Korea. Seoul and Tokyo have remained on a collision course over ownership of the islands in the Sea of Japan.
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