"West Sea"

[Benjamin Barrett]

There are a lot of web-mentions of the fact that the Yellow Sea is called either the Yellow Sea or the West Sea in Korea.

In 2010, however, CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/11/26/koreas.crisis/) defines the West Sea as the part of the Yellow Sea:

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The West Sea, part of the Yellow Sea that is nearest to the Koreas, was the scene of Tuesday's shelling.
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I didn't search for any earlier results.

FWIW, see also See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_of_Japan_naming_dispute and http://defence.pk/threads/south-korea-calls-for-sea-name-change.175344/ for the Sea of Japan versus the East Sea.

Benjamin Barrett
Formerly of Seattle, WA

Learn Ainu! https://sites.google.com/site/aynuitak1/videos


On Apr 29, 2014, at 9:16 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

> CNN now calls what was once the "Yellow Sea," the "West Sea."
>
> Is "Yellow Sea" now considered offensive?
>
> Acc. to Wikipedia, the name (translated from Korean) comes from the golden
> tint of the waters, which is imparted by the down-flowing sands of the Gobi
> Desert.
>
> "West Sea," of course, is blatantly ethnocentric. The area may be west of
> Korea, but it is equally east of China. That makes it part of the
> ethnocentric "East China Sea." Is it west or is it east? Up or down?
> Someone must decide.
>
> And while they're at it, there's the Black Sea, the Red Sea, and the
> transparently imperialist White Sea.

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