Campaign for ‘East Sea’ in full swing in U.S.

WASHINGTON (Yonhap News) ― A group of Koreans living in the U.S. said Wednesday it is staging a full-scale campaign to discredit the name “Sea of Japan.”

The group prefers the name East Sea for the waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan, and wants that reflected in U.S. textbooks.

“Our final goal is to include ‘the East Sea’ in all textbooks used at elementary, junior high and high schools in 50 states by March 2017,” said Peter Y. Kim, head of the Voice of Korean Americans. “This civic movement will be a very tough one.”

The Virginia-based group was launched recently to maintain momentum in grass-roots efforts to change the U.S. government’s single-name policy on the body of water also bordered by Russia.

Koreans say the name Sea of Japan is a legacy of Japan’s imperial past. Japan colonized Korea from 1910 to 1945.

Kim said his group has set a realistic short-term goal of having the U.S. officially use the two names simultaneously.

Kim spearheaded an online petition with the White House last year, drawing a total of 102,043 signatures.

Such an effort failed to change the U.S. government’s stance on the issue but helped enhance public awareness on Korea’s position.

Kim described last year’s drive as the first stage of a long campaign.

“We are now kicking off the second phase,” he said at a press conference Wednesday.

VoKA will focus on reaching out to members of the boards of education in all 50 states to modify textbooks, he added.

Kim pointed out that lobbying state legislators is more difficult due to the influence of the Japanese community.

In 2012, a Virginia lawmaker, David W. Marsden, introduced a bill to the education panel of Virginia Senate that would have required public school textbooks to carry both the names Sea of Japan and the East Sea. The panel turned it down in a 8-7 vote.