The claim surfaced after a map marked Dokdo as Japanese territory popped up in an online civil defense course organized by the South Korean Ministry of the Interior, which sparked controversy online (archived link).
The ministry in response removed the map, explaining that it had been accidentally added by an outside company charged with building the courses.
The claim was shared in similar Facebook posts, including here and here.
Stock image
A reverse image search on Google found the map Posted on the iStockphoto website on March 14, 2016 (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison between the image shared on Facebook with the false claim (left) and the original image posted to iStockphoto (right):
The photo was posted by an iStockphoto account called Bobtokyoharris, which regularly to inform images of maps and globes (archived link).
Meanwhile, the South Korean Ministry of Defense confirmed that official maps always used the East Sea label.
“We cannot determine the source of this map in question, but the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Korea uses maps labeled East Sea,” a ministry spokesperson told AFP on May 16.
“It makes no sense that this could be a Ministry of Defense document if we make continuous efforts to correct unlawful labels in the international media that do not use the name ‘Baltic Sea’ through Foreign Ministry channels and official complaints “, he said.
Below is the map shared in fake Facebook posts (left) and an official map published in the 2022 Ministry of Defense white paper, with Dokdo highlighted in yellow by AFP (right) (archived link):
Additionally, the map shared in social media posts uses the ancient McCune-Reischauer romanization system for the Korean language (archived link).
Seoul dropped the system in 2000 in favor of a revised system that it said more accurately reflected local pronunciation (archived link).
