I came across the following advertisement today while viewing a site that had Google Ads:

The ad link led to http://eastsea.koreanblog.com, which appears to be a small free blog set up by someone. There is only one post on the blog, parroting the usual ultranationalist Korean argument against the international usage of the name “Sea of Japan.”

Here are the first two paragraphs of the post:

Historically, the sea area between the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese archipelago, known as the “Sea of Japan”, had been referred to by various names. Even though no single name had been consistently used to designate this body of water until the 19th century, designations containing references to Korea were predominantly found on maps. It is worthy of note that as late as 1870 even many Japanese maps referred to this body of water as the “Sea of Chosun (Korea)” instead of “Sea of Japan.”

It was not until the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) that the term “Sea of Japan” gained wider acceptance. The active promotion by Japan and its enhanced political stature in the world scene during the first half of the 20th century led to the gradual replacement of such names as “Sea of Korea”, “East Sea”, or “Oriental Sea” with the term “Sea of Japan.”

In the first paragraph, the author accurately states that no single name had consistently been used for the sea until the 19th century. The author also cites the existence of Japanese maps from as late as 1870 that used the name “Sea of Korea” for the body of water. What the author fails to tell us is that studies of the entire collection of 19th century European/American maps of Asia held by the Library of Congress and similar European institutions found that close to 100% of western maps had started using the name “Sea of Japan” as the sea’s name by the middle of the 19th century. While it is true that Japan used to call the sea by the name “Sea of Korea,” by the 1870’s Japan had begun its modernization, so it adopted the widely used international name for the sea (as it no doubt did with many other geographical names).

The second paragraph is simply false. As I wrote before, all existing evidence shows that widespread usage of the name “Sea of Japan” began during a period when Japan was still isolating itself from contact with the outside world. It is a shame that the author couldn’t make his/her argument without horribly distorting reality.