SEOUL, Aug. 18 (Yonhap) — Dozens of international experts on geographical names will gather in Finland next week to discuss a long-running dispute between South Korea and Japan over what to call the waters between the two countries, organizers of the event said Tuesday.
The International Seminar on the Naming of Seas and East Sea, the 21st of its kind, will be held in the Finnish capital of Helsinki from Aug. 23-26, according to the Society for East Sea, a Seoul-based organization campaigning to publicize South Korea’s position on the issue.
It is co-organizing the annual conference with the Northeast Asian History Foundation here.
More than 40 experts from South Korea, the United States, Finland, Austria, Poland, Germany and eight other nations will participate in the session and issue a total of 18 relevant essays, it said.
They include Joseph Stoltman, a professor at Western Michigan University, who has long supported the use of the name “East Sea,” rather than “Sea of Japan.”
Also attending are some U.S. teachers who contributed to the passage of a landmark bill on the East Sea name in the Virginia state legislature last year.
The legislation calls for both names to be used in all new public school textbooks in the state.
Koreans regard the East Sea as the proper name, but the name Sea of Japan is apparently more popular in the international community as a legacy of Japan’s colonization of Korea from 1910-45.
lcd@yna.co.kr
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2015/08/18
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