Dear David,

Hello, I 'm Hyunsea Lee, a student. I am member of Dokdo Cyber press in Korea. Firstly I wold like to thank you for allowing us to share lots of information free of charge through your web-site. I showed your map about 'Sea of Japan', but I wanted to send some information why we should label that sea to 'East sea'.

For 2000 years the name of this body of water has been the East Sea. Korea’s oldest history book, ‘The histroy of Three Kingdoms’ records that the name East Sea had been in use since 37 B.C. The name East sea was introduced to the Europeans as the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago began to appear on world maps following the worldwide voyages of discovery in the 16th century. Untill the 19th century, the sea area was variously called, the sea of korea, the eastern sea, the oriental sea,and the sea of japan.

However, japanese infulence in East Asia began to rise rapidly in the 19th century, and in 1910,japan annexed Korea. At that time, Japan try to convert local geographical names to Japanese. Against this background, the first edition of Limist of oceans and seas published by IHO in 1929 used only the name Japan Sea. Korea has made continuous efforts to restore the name East Sea for decades. Resoultuins adopted by the UNCSGN and the IHO recommend that when countries haring a given geographical feature fail to agree on a common name, competing names should be concurently used. 

Therefore we sincerely hope worldwide will understand the relavant facts and historical background of the matter and I hope this real facts would be helped for you . Above all, I really appreciate for you to read my long letter. Hope I can receive any message of your opinion.

Thanks & Br,

Hyunsea Lee