An exhibition will be held next week in Seoul featuring some 70 historical maps and other relics that attest to the validity of the name, "East Sea."
 
Together with the Kyung Hee University Hye-Jung Museum and the Education Ministry, the Seoul Arts Center will host “Dong-Hae Proved Through the Old Maps of the World”
 
The organizer said the program will be the first time relics and documents related to the East Sea are gathered and unveiled at one place. 
 
From March 22nd to April sixth, the organizer said the exhibition will provide an objective, third-party perspective regarding the validity of calling the waters between Korea and Japan "East Sea".
 
The display items include western, Korean and Japanese old maps denoting the East Sea in names such as 'SEA OF COREA' 'COREAN SEA' and 'MER DE COREE.'
 
The art center says the exhibit is also to support efforts made by Korean Americans in the U.S. as they strive to defend the East Sea name against "Sea of Japan."
 
Many old western maps will be on display including a 1794 map, titled the "Empire of Japan Divided into Seven Principal Parts and Subdivided into Sixty-Six Kingdoms." British mathematician Samuel Dunn labeled the East Sea as COREAN SEA on the map based on other maps of Japan produced in France, Germany and Portugal.
 
Also among the display is a world map made in Japan in 1810 drafted by a Japanese official upon orders from the Edo era shogunate. In this map, the East Sea is labeled in Chinese letters as the "Sea of Joseon," while calling the sea located east of Japan as "Sea of Japan."
 
National Treasure No. 1598, a late Joseon Dynasty map of Gangwon, Gyeonggi and Hamgyeong provinces adjacent to the East Sea, will also go on display.