Criticism has been raised as the Los Angeles Dodgers of the U.S. Major League Baseball (MLB) announced a donation plan to recover from the strong earthquake in Japan, marking it as Sea of Japan, not East Sea. “Otani posted the same news in Japanese on his personal SNS account, but he did not use Sea of Japan expression,” he said, sending a protest email to the Los Angeles Dodgers. 안전놀이터 추천
Professor Seo Kyung-duk of Sungshin Women’s University, a Korean public relations expert, said on SNS on the 8th, “The LA Dodgers announced on the 5th that it would donate $1 million (about 1.3 billion won) to Shohei Ohtani and the affected area,” adding, “At this time, many Korean fans of the LA Dodgers were angry by using the Sea of Japan notation.”
He then pointed out, “No matter how much the earthquake occurred in Japan, and even if Ohtani is Japanese, it is certainly wrong to only mark the Sea of Japan claimed by the Japanese government, not the weapon mark with the East Sea.”
Professor Seo explained in an e-mail, “The name of the sea between Korea and Japan has historically been used as the East Sea for 2000 years,” adding, “We began to describe the East Sea and Sea of Japan in the world history textbook of the AP exam, one of the U.S. college entrance exam courses, and in 2019, the New York State Department of Education recommended that schools mention the East Sea and Sea of Japan together.”
He added, “Last year, the map of MLB’s website, which hosted the World Baseball Classic (WBC), marked it as a Sea of Japan and deleted it after being protested by Korea.”
Professor Seo said, “A few days ago, in an article introducing Korean tourism by the leading British daily The Times, the East Sea was marked as a Sea of Japan alone, and since then, the East Sea has been marked as a weapon,” adding, “We will strongly push for a global campaign to change the wrong Sea of Japan to the East Sea this year.”