Webmasters, beware. If you have a map of Northeast Asia on your site and the body of water located between Japan and the Korean Peninsula is labeled “Sea of Japan,” you may soon find your email inbox full of messages seeking to “correct” your geography.

Groups of loosely organized South Korean netizens regularly fire off thousands of emails in an effort to promote their country’s national image and rectify what they consider to be grave mistakes about Korean history, geography, and culture. Depending upon how you view them, these folks are either selfstyled “cyber factcheckers” or hypernationalistic spammers. One such group is the Voluntary Agency Network of Korea (VANK). Originally founded as an international pen pal organization, VANK’s mission no longer involves friendly exchange. Instead, its members scour Web sites for “errors” about Korea, then barrage violators with protest emails. For instance, VANK wages a continual campaign to change the name of the Sea of Japan to the East Sea. “We are aware that some people criticize us as nothing but nationalists who give onesided facts to foreigners. But it is a misconception,” says Park GiTae, VANK’s founder and director.

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Copyright © James Card.