The other day I happened across an interesting headline: “Virginia vote on Sea of Japan hands victory to Koreans.” While the article seemed to indicate that the state had voted to rename the Sea of Japan to the “East Sea” (the name South Korea is pushing for), it was merely a resolution that both names should be used in textbooks approved by the Board of Education, something Google Maps already does. It’s an interesting plot twist in the ongoing war of words between Japan and Korea, which has increasingly spilled over to the U.S., as Korean groups pay lobbyists to petition state lawmakers on their behalf, erect billboards in Texas declaring that Dokdo (the disputed islands which Japan calls Takeshima) are Korean property, and even put up a statue honoring comfort woman in Los Angeles, a move that has Japanese living in the city starting to feel downright unsafe. To be perfectly clear: Japan did terrible things before and during World War II, though the actual crimes committed have been embellished by China and Korea, who have made it a national past time to demonize Japan. When it normalized relations with South Korea, Japan paid $800 million (nearly $6 trillion in today’s dollars) as reparations for Koreans killed or forced into military service by Japan, asking to pay the money directly to the victims; the then-military government said no, give it to us instead, whereupon it used most of the money for economic development without passing it on to the actual victims. I fear that the PR war will continue to go badly for Japan for a couple of reasons. First, Japanese are not savvy enough to hire lobbying firms or fill YouTube with (silly) videos promoting their side of things, and also because Koreans are generally so much better at English than most Japanese.
Someday Samsung and Apple will agree on who really owns those islands.
