VANK fears 'Sea of Japan' still widely used worldwide for East Sea

The Voluntary Agency Network of Korea (VANK) has expressed concern that the Sea of Japan continues to be the widely used name for the body of water between South Korea and Japan, despite the historical reference to it as the East Sea. After reviewing ten foreign government agencies and international databases, VANK discovered that major institutions such as the U.S. Department of State, NASA, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, Britannica, and National Geographic consistently use the incorrect name.

This widespread usage, particularly given that over 1.2 billion people worldwide rely on generative artificial intelligence (AI), poses a risk of spreading inaccurate place names. VANK warns that if such names are incorporated into AI training data by reputable institutions, they could be inaccurately propagated. The U.S. travel advisory for South Korea, as well as NASA's satellite imagery and Britannica's educational content, all use the Sea of Japan name.

This raises concerns about the potential for errors to appear at the top of search engine results, due to the credibility of the sources. Additionally, inconsistencies have been found in international organization databases and even within single publications like Britannica Kids and National Geographic Kids, where the same page contains both names.

The FAO's AGROVOC thesaurus, which provides translations in 15 languages, also omits the East Sea name in its English entries.