Dokdo billboard set up on AT&T Park in San Francisco

A large billboard promoting Dokdo has been set up on a parking lot of AT&T Park in San Francisco, California, the venue of the final round of the third World Baseball Classic.

The board, set up on Friday night, carries the headline, “Welcome to Dokdo, Korea, East Sea,” against the panoramic aerial image of the easternmost Korean islets.

On the bottom right, the phrase “Dokdo Belongs to Korea!” appears.

The billboard targets spectators of the WBC games to be held in the ballpark from March 17-19. It will stay there until the end of this month.

Dokdo is under the effective control of Korea. Notwithstanding, Japan claims sovereignty over the islets.

The billboard promotion was arranged by Jonathan H. Kim, a Korean-American dentist who runs an orthodontic and implant center in San Jose near San Francisco.

“I thought I had to do something for our second- and third-generation Korean-Americans to learn about Korea correctly,” Kim told Yonhap News Agency. The 54-year-old immigrated to the U.S. when he was a first-year student in high school.

“I did not set up the billboard to fight against Japan. I did so because I could not sit idly while U.S. companies changed the name of the Korean islands,” he said.

Last October he joined a Dokdo-related petition to the White House after seeing Google, Apple and Yahoo either erase the Korean name of Dokdo or designate the islets as Takeshima alongside Dokdo on their own map services.

In addition to AT&T Park, he plans to promote Dokdo on a digital board along Highway 101 in California from March 18.

By Chun Sung-woo (swchun@heraldcorp.com)