The Sea of Doppenheimer

Recently the White House reported that their main homepage was taken down after being accessed by a large number of South Koreans. This was the result of South Koreans joining a Virginia-based petition on the White House website to ban school textbooks which refer to the sea to the west of Japan, known as “the Sea of Japan,” instead of “the East Sea.” Koreans have long desired this change since the sea did not originally bear the name of Japan; it gained that name after Japan expanded their military into other Asian countries in 1928. Korea was liberated in 1945, but Japan refuses to return the sea to its previous name.

Americans have begun to side with Korea in this debate, citing that American soldiers helped Korea gain its independence in World War II. Some Americans are claiming that it is wrong to accept a “false history that was manipulated by the invader who attacked ‘Pearl Harbor.’”

I have two problems with these arguments. The first involves the U.S. government directly. Anyone who knows anything about the U.S. government and the American school system probably knows that the federal government has no say in the textbooks that schools use; the books are chosen directly by the schools from a list approved by the local state. So petitioning the federal government will likely yield little result in the Koreans’ favor.

My other problem is that it doesn’t really matter. South Korea, along with supporters in the U.S., seems to be the only voice desiring a change to the name. Practically every other nation of global influence cares very little about the change. And the change itself would only affect Korea and Japan as a whole; the only adverse effect to other nations would come from war that may start between the two nations if the debate continues.

In all honestly, it doesn’t really matter what a large body of water is called. It will still be the same large body of water if we called it “the Sea of Doppenheimer.” Nothing would change unless the name somehow gives a nation more control over the sea.

Counter-petitions have been made, claiming that the Sea of Japan has always held that name, but no evidence was provided by either side. The issue has been widely reported in the Korean media, leading to large numbers flooding the White House’s petition site to gain signatures on both sides. The White House reported that on the 20th of April the server was downed by heavy traffic and analysis suggested the vast majority of the IPs involved were from South Korea. The White House’s response was to temporarily block Korean access to the site until the flood of traffic abated.

It seems unlikely, however, that the federal government would act on the desires of the petitioners even if it were able to. Most of the petitions seem be ignored in favor of overly popular ones, which usually lead to official statements about how the federal government’s policy already reflects the desires of the petition.