Dear INDEPENDENT,

Hello,

My name is Jiwoo Park, who is a 2nd grade student in a Korean high school. I am writing this email to request you to correct an absolutely partial naming of the sea between Korea and Japan, which is named as Sea of Japan in your article, “Russian Defense Chief hails joint military drills with China” uploaded in 13 August 2021 on your website. I know this article does not focus on the current naming dispute between Korea and Japan. It simply refers to the sea while reporting the situation of joint military drills between Russia and China. In spite of its intention, however, the problem of incorrect naming of the sea is very critical to Koreans considering Japanese distortive attitude toward Korean territory and history.

We Koreans call the sea East Sea. Japan took the advantage of the recognition of International Hydrographic Organization(IHO) for its naming the sea as Sea of Japan. It was time when Korea was under Japanese occupation, therefore Korea did not raise its voice over this issue at all. It is very unfair denomination to name the sea in favor of Japanese position without considering such tragic historical facts. We also have many historical proofs that showed the sea was called East Sea, such as previous maps, documents and books, even made from foreign authors.

As you might know, many journals and institutes started to call the sea as East Sea, at least marking the sea as East Sea as well. The United Kingdom recently deleted Sea of Japan from its official travel site(www.gov.uk). Worldtravels.com even replaced Sea of Japan with East Sea.  In September 2020, the IHO announced that it would adopt a new numerical system which designates whole seas and oceans including the Sea of Japan by a set of digital identifiers, also known as "S-130."

As I explained above, the single naming of the sea as Sea of Japan is officially no longer valid in any aspect. Therefore, I strongly request INDEPENDENT to correct the single naming of the sea. Honestly, I believe the term of sea must be East Sea only, but on the view of the third party as you should be at least neutral as far as dispute is concerned. Thank you for your looking through my full story. Sincerely, I am looking forward to seeing your immediate action as soon as possible.