CONTESTING PLACE NAMES: THE EAST SEA/SEA OF JAPAN NAMING ISSUE

Date

2020-09-29

Department

Program

Citation of Original Publication

John Rennie Short & Leah Dubots (2020) CONTESTING PLACE NAMES: THE EAST SEA/SEA OF JAPAN NAMING ISSUE, Geographical Review, DOI: 10.1080/00167428.2020.1827936

Rights

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Geographical Review on Sept. 29, 2020, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00167428.2020.1827936.
Access to this item will begin on March 29, 2022.

Subjects

Abstract

Building on the work of critical toponymy, this paper provides an example of the active contestation of a place name. Since the early 1990s, successive Korean governments have argued that the singular use of “Sea of Japan” is a colonial legacy. We provide a brief historical context for this dispute. We identify the array of names currently used in newspapers, journals, educational texts, and internet sites and show that a dual naming is now a more common usage, especially in international English-language newspapers, atlases, educational textbooks and internet materials. A colonial naming practice has been challenged.