This image, captured from the website of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command on Oct. 5, 2023, shows a photo caption of a bilateral naval exercise between South Korea and the United States on Sept. 27, 2023. The caption has been changed to describe the venue of the exercise from the “Sea of Japan” to “At Sea.” (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Oct. 5 (Korea Bizwire) – The U.S. military has changed the naming of the waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan in photo captions describing the venue for last week’s bilateral naval drills with South Korea, its website showed Thursday.
The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command had initially used the Japanese name for the body of waters, the “Sea of Japan,” in the captions on the three-day exercise that ended last Wednesday although South Korea calls it the “East Sea.”
The unit’s website showed the captions have since been changed to read “At Sea.”
Seoul’s defense ministry said it has made requests to the U.S. military to change the naming of the waters in its published material whenever it is marked as the Sea of Japan.
“A change was requested again this time, and the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command made the change,” a ministry official said. “There are cases in the past where the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command changed the Sea of Japan naming due to our request.”
Many photo captions previously published by the U.S. unit referencing the East Sea notate it as the Sea of Japan, while some describe it as “waters to the east of the Korean Peninsula.”
(Yonhap)
