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Five Bergen County lawmakers have introduced a bill to rename the Sea of Japan, shown in this file photo.

(Creative Commons)

TRENTON — What does a sea on the other side of the Earth have to do with New Jersey?

To five state legislators from Bergen County who represent a large and politically active Korean-American community, the answer is simple: plenty.

For that reason, the lawmakers — all Democrats — want the state government to call the body of water between Japan and the Korean Peninsula both the "East Sea" and the "Sea of Japan."

Western nations know the sea primarily as the Sea of Japan.

On Monday , the lawmakers introduced a bill (A2478) that would require the state and all its political subdivisions, "to the extent practicable," to refer to the contested body of water between Korea and Japan as the East Sea.

But soon afterward the sponsors said they planned to amend the measure to include both names in the unlikely event the government has to refer to it at all, and to require future textbooks in New Jersey schools to use that terminology as well.

"We non-Asian Americans have very little knowledge of this body of water," Assemblyman Gordon Johnson (D-Bergen), one of the sponsors, said. "When I spoke to the different Korean-American groups, they felt this should be a way to educate the non-Asian Americans as to what the history is, and maybe stimulate them to look into the history."

For decades, the name of the sea — fraught with history — has been a delicate issue for South Korea and Japan.

South Koreans, who favor "East Sea", say that calling it the Sea of Japan is "colonialist" and harks back to Japan’s brutal past rule of the Korean peninsula. They claim the name only came into popular use during that period.

Japan — already in an increasingly tense standoff with China over a group of islands in the East China Sea that the two countries contest — wants the name to stay the same. In 2012 it issued a pamphlet titled "Sea of Japan — The one and Only Name Familiar to the International Community."

And while the introduction of the legislation went largely unnoticed in New Jersey, it created a small international stir.

"It's extremely regrettable," Japan's chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga, said at a press conference this week, according to the Japanese news agency Kyodo News International. "We'll take various steps in response through diplomatic channels while seeking a correct understanding of the name of the Sea of Japan in the international community."

North Korea — South Korea’s totalitarian neighbor — has taken the issue a step further, and wants call it the sea the "East Sea of Korea."

Back in New Jersey, Assemblyman Joseph Lagana (D-Bergen), also a sonsor of the bill, said he wanted the measure to reflect both the Japanese and South Korean names, mirroring legislation approved by the Virginia legislature and introduced in New York.

"We’re not looking to alienate anyone," said Lagana. who noted that he got the idea from constituent groups. "It’s more to put things in historical context in light of the ever-growing Korean-American community in Bergen County, as well as to recognize how history should be taught to all students."

There are 93,679 Koreans in New Jersey, according to the 2010 census. More than half of them, 56,773, live in Bergen County. And they’ve been seeking more political influence. By contrast, there are 13,146 Japanese-Americans in New Jersey, 5,922 of whom live in Bergen County.

When Democrats rejected the nomination of Phil Kwon — a Korean-American who was an assistant state attorney general at the time — to the state Supreme Court, Republicans saw the move as an opportunity to make inroads with the historically Democratic voting bloc.

State Sen. Kevin O’Toole (R-Essex), who is half Korean-American and represents part of Bergen County, went so far as to call the rejection of Kwon over his voter registration and family business interests a "lynching."

"I apologize for what the Senate Judiciary Committee did to Phil Kwon and to the community, and that should never happen again," O’Toole said at a 2012 news conference, where he was joined by the Republican Bergen County executive, Kathe Donovan, according to the Fort Lee Patch.

The newly introduced bill would not require New Jersey to pay any expenses for publishers to comply with the law. And Lagana said that after he amended the bill, the textbook requirement would not take effect until 2016.

For now, no companion legislation has been introduced in the state Senate, and O’Toole said he was not sure there was a need for it.

"Do I understand the South Koreans’ feelings about having this as the East Sea? Yeah, I understand fully well why they want it," he said. "And I just don’t understand what bearing a Senate or Assembly will have on it."

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