Some international maps including Google, in an attempt to remain neutral over Japan's flimsy colonial-era claim to the islets, refer to them by this old nautical name.

The Chosun Ilbo published a letter from a reader on Monday pointing out that the islets appear as "Liancourt Rocks" on the websites, which is all the more egregious since Korea has been lobbying around the world to call the islets by their proper name.

The foreign and unification ministries scurried early Tuesday morning to fix maps on their own websites that made the cardinal error of allowing the wrong name to appear for Korea's easternmost islets of Dokdo.

Fervent patriots had to do some digging to be offended. A search showed that the "location" icon on the English website of the Foreign Ministry is linked to Google Maps, and scrolling east on the map from its downtown Seoul headquarters to Dokdo displayed a portion of the map that read "Liancourt Rocks" instead of "Dokdo."

The same map shows the East Sea as the "Sea of Japan," another shibboleth. The Chinese-language website of the Unification Ministry had the same problem.

The Unification Ministry rushed to change the map late at night, so now only a Korean map appears on the Chinese-language website, while the Foreign Ministry changed its map to disable scrolling beyond its Gwanghwamun location.

The name "Liancourt Rocks" comes from a French whaling ship that came close to being wrecked there in 1849. The U.S. and European countries use that name to stay out of the spat between Korea and Japan.

A government source said, "There have been many problems caused by using Google Maps, and it's embarrassing that the government's major diplomatic branches have taken up the mistake."