'East Sea' has been used for more than 2,000 years, and is still used by 75 million Korean people, and has an important meaning to us as it appears in the first verse of the national anthem. Nevertheless, unlike Japan, we do not insist on the use of ¡®East Sea¡¯ alone instead of ¡®Japan Sea¡¯, and we are presenting a rational way of stating the names used by both sides together.
The first record of ¡°East Sea¡± was in The History of the Three Kingdoms and the Saga of King Dong- myeong and in the process of recording matters in around 59 B.C., ¡°East Sea¡± appears. It is also known that it was used jointly with the country name of ¡°Japan¡¯s¡± use of the ¡°Sea of Japan¡±name starting around 700 years afterwards. Moreover, the ¡°East Sea¡±, starting with the Korean peninsula, is bordering Japan, Russia, etc. so it is not just Japan¡¯s sea, but a sea that many countries share. Therefore, Japan¡¯s opinion of one-sidedly referring it to independently as the ¡°Sea of Japan¡± is not right