Chosun Ilbo Draws ‘Line of Death!’

Let’s start by giving credit where it’s due.  The Chosun Ilbo wrote a great headline:  “An Offer Worth Throwing Into the East Sea.”  Nice.  They refer to President Roh Moo Hyun’s howler about renaming the Sea of Japan the “Sea of Peace.”  This is just the latest new low in Korea’s unhealthy obsession with things that do not matter, to the detriment of addressing things that matter.

[T]he president, without careful scrutiny, blurted out an impromptu proposal about an issue as important as our nation’s territory, and during a summit of all places. If Japan interprets the president’s comments as Korea having abandoned its East Sea, our nation would have been put in a truly pathetic position.

But not like its functional cession of claims on half of Korea’s land and a third of its population, or the forced repatriation of its POW’s, abductees, and northern citizens to gulags and firing squads, strung together with wires through their wrists and noses.  These things are best managed through “quiet diplomacy.”  After all, freedom for North Koreans would be like putting pearls on a pig.  Much better that they quietly die in place without making a fuss.

It’s a mystery why a president who took such steps made such a “bold” offer to Japan, especially involving the name of the sea that encompasses a set of Korean islands that Japan has been claiming as its own.

To publicize the “East Sea” designation, a group of Korean scholars, journalists and cultural experts formed a study group in 1994 and since then have been holding international seminars each year, while passing out to libraries and universities around the world English-language maps containing the East Sea reference.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present scholars and experts — ambassadors of their country, just like …

A group of self-appointed “cyber diplomats”, the Voluntary Agency Network of Korea, or VANK, is conducting a fierce Internet battle with Japan over the issue.

I don’t believe this.  The VANK losers are … diplomats?  “0 wad some Power the giftie gie us / To see oursels as ithers see us! / It wad frae monie a blunder free us….”  LiNK’s members are braving the very real risk of years in Chinese prisons to save actual Korean lives, and a bunch of cyber-thugs in PC-bangs are crowned as the new Righteous Army?

Due to such efforts, maps in various countries are changing the “Sea of Japan” reference to include the name “East Sea.

And I have to say that there is some truth to that, and it’s a sad illustration of the shocking decline in world testosterone levels.  The Sea of Japan was named “Sea of Japan,” and has been called that for decades, because it’s … a sea … surrounded on two sides … by Japan.  For Korea to expect anyone outside of Korea to call it the “East Sea” makes exactly as much sense as the United States expecting that everyone on earth must henceforth refer to the Pacific as the “West Ocean.”

Finally, let’s revisit the most pregnant three-letter word in this editorial:  “its” East Sea?  Are the editors of the Chosun Ilbo claiming that the Sea of Japan is their exclusive inland territorial sea because of … Tokdo?  If so, South Korea badly needs to reconsider its signature on the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which guarantees freedom of navigation.  When you consider the hissy fits over something as benign as Japanese hydrographic surveys and long-established place names like “Sea of Japan,” that principle does seem to be under some strain.
We are now approaching belligerent delusions of grandeur on a North Korean scale.  Maybe a better descrption would be Khaddafyesque.   And it probably leads in the same direction:  with the protagonist as a marginalized pariah that needs a glass-bottom boat to review its Navy.  I emphasize that I don’t care enough about Tokdo to have an opinion on the claims of either side, and I don’t see what either side has to fear from international arbitration.  Even more elegant would be for Korea, which has possession of the yet-unrenamed rocks, to be quietly contented with its physical occupation of the islands.  Unfortunately, that wouldn’t help exorcise whatever spirit has taken possession of Korea, and to the great detriment of its interests and image abroad, and even to its intellectual freedom at home.