South Korea and the United States plan to use a "neutral expression" in their joint document to be issued this week in describing the waters between South Korea and Japan, a sensitive issue due to the long-time territorial dispute stemming from Japan's past aggression, a diplomatic source said Sunday.
South Koreans were dumbfounded when Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell repeatedly called the waters the "Sea of Japan," not the East Sea, during a press briefing last week on a plan to hold joint naval drills with South Korea there.
While the name Sea of Japan is more widely known internationally, South Korea officially dubs the waters, also bordered by North Korea and Russia, the East Sea. South Koreans claim the title Sea of Japan was unfairly standardized during Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula and remains a symbol of Japan's imperialistic past.
Koreans are also angry at Japan's continued claim to the sovereignty over Dokdo, a set of South Korean-controlled rocky islets, in the East Sea.
The Pentagon official's naming of the sea raised a question over Washington's formal stance on the politically and diplomatically sensitive
matter ahead of the first-ever meeting between the foreign and defense ministries from South Korea and the U.S. to be held in Seoul on Wednesday.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and State of Defense Robert Gates are scheduled to discuss with their South Korean counterparts the details of planned joint naval exercises off the western and eastern coast of the peninsula to show the strength of the alliance in the face of continued
North Korean provocations.
"A joint statement to be adopted at the two-plus-two meeting includes the contents of South Korea-U.S. combined exercises in the East Sea and West Sea," the source said on the condition of anonymity. "As far as I know, they
plan to describe the venues as waters 'off the east and west coast of the Korean Peninsula.'"
Earlier in the day, Rep. Won Hee-ryong of the ruling Grand National Party sent a letter to Clinton and Gates explaining South Korea's position.
"The expression Sea of Japan used by a U.S. official conflicts the South Korean government's position to pursue the expression of East Sea," Won, head of the National Assembly's committee on diplomacy, trade and unification, said in the letter.
Won pointed out that for South Korean people, the ownership of Dokdo and the naming of the East Sea are important issues and called for the U.S. to pay heed to them.