Seoul Wins Textbook War Against Japan

Updated Feb. 7, 2014 3:06 a.m. ET

Members of Virginia’s Korean American community celebrate with a group photo after the passage of Virginia House Bill 11, outside the Virginia State Capital in Richmond, Virginia, on Thursday. Jay Paul/Reuters

South Korea welcomed a decision by Virginia to back its position in a sea-naming dispute with Japan, the latest flashpoint in deteriorating relations between Seoul and Tokyo. Japan expressed regret over the move.
Virginia’s state legislature on Thursday voted to mandate the inclusion of the Korean name for the sea between Japan and Korea in the state’s school textbooks from July. The bill, driven by the state’s large Korean-American community, will mark the first time a U.S. state has required two names to be used for the sea in teaching materials.
South Korea has long called for its preferred name of “East Sea” to be used internationally, alongside the Japanese name “Sea of Japan.” Tokyo argues that Sea of Japan is globally recognized as the sole name of the ocean, including by the United Nations.
Seoul counters that the standardization occurred while Korea was under occupation by Japan from 1910 to 1945 and thus is a vestige of the colonial period.
The dispute over textbooks in Virginia became a proxy battle between the governments of South Korea and Japan over the naming issue. Seoul backed the change with diplomatic efforts, while Tokyo hired a team of lobbyists from McGuireWoods Consulting on the issue, according to a contract signed Dec. 19 and released under U.S. disclosure laws.
In December, Japan’s ambassador to the U.S., Kenichiro Sasae, sent Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe a letter to protest the initiative and warn that “strong economic ties between Japan and Virginia may be damaged if the bills are to be enacted,” according to the Associated Press.
On Friday, Seoul celebrated Virginia’s vote in favor of the new policy.
“The Korean government highly rates this movement by the Virginia state legislature, which came from the efforts of compatriots in the U.S. to include the name East Sea,” South Korean Foreign Ministry Spokesman Cho Tai-young told a regular news conference.
Virginia’s house of delegates passed the legislation by a vote of 81-15, requiring “all textbooks approved by the Board of Education after July 1, 2014, to note that the Sea of Japan is also referred to as the East Sea.” Gov. McAuliffe has indicated he will sign the legislation.
Around 80,000 Korean-Americans live in Virginia and have long campaigned to promote the name East Sea. The state’s ethnic Japanese community is far smaller.
Tokyo expressed disappointment over the move.
“The Virginia state legislature’s approval of the bill is extremely regrettable. Japan will ask the international community for a correct understanding and support, and continue to take appropriate measures on the matter based on this stance,” an official for Japan’s foreign ministry said, citing a government statement.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department said this week there was no change to government policy to use a single name for the ocean.
“The U.S. Board on Geographic Names’ standard name for that body of water is the Sea of Japan. We understand that the Republic of Korea and others use a different term, but that is the term we use,” Jennifer Psaki said on Wednesday.
The sea-naming dispute is one of several long-running disagreements between the U.S.’s two main allies in Northeast Asia related to Japan’s occupation of the Korean peninsula. Relations deteriorated further in December following a visit by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to a controversial war shrine in Tokyo.
Tense ties between South Korea and Japan have frustrated Washington’s efforts to form a strong trilateral alliance amid rising security risks in the region from a more assertive China and an unpredictable North Korea. Before Mr. Abe’s visit, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden called for better ties between Japan and South Korea during stops in both countries and other officials have repeated the message since.
The issue of the sea between Korea and Japan is particularly sensitive because a set of islets roughly halfway between the two countries remain in dispute. The Liancourt Rocks are controlled by Seoul, which calls them Dokdo. Tokyo also claims the territory and calls it Takeshima.
The dispute flared up in August 2012 when South Korean President Lee Myung-bak became the first president to visit the rocks. In January this year, Japan revised guidelines to instruct teachers to describe the islets as being illegally occupied by South Korea.
Among other contentious issues between the two nations, South Korea has been pushing hardest to obtain a new apology and compensation for the so-called comfort women, or sex slaves used by the Japanese military during World War II. To increase attention on the issue, South Korea has more than doubled its budget this year to support and publicize the 51 surviving women, who average 88-years-old.
It began a series of promotional events by sponsoring cartoons illustrating the experience of the comfort women at a show in France that ended on Sunday. Seoul also plans to fund a new documentary about the comfort women, hold further art exhibits and stage an academic symposium later this year on the issue.
Japan says that a 1965 treaty that provided South Korea with compensation for wartime damage covers payouts to the women and has noted a string of formal apologies by senior officials to the women. Officials in Tokyo also maintain that no evidence exists to prove the military’s direct involvement in forced recruitment of the women.
—Toko Sekiguchi in Tokyo and Min Sun Lee in Seoul contributed to this article.

Continued here: Seoul Wins Textbook War Against Japan