A question for Ernie Baron

Ongoing till April 27 in the pretty principality of Monaco is the conference of the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO), which meets there every five years. The IHO conference website has a list of expected representatives from which the Philippines is missing. Our country representative, the head of the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority (Namria), should be there to argue for the renaming of part of the present South China Sea within our borders into the West Philippine Sea. Philippine attendance at the IHO conference comes at a critical time when the Philippine Navy is physically asserting our claim to the Spratly Islands against a superior Chinese navy. It is a crucial time when our Department of Foreign Affairs is exhausting all diplomatic means and avenues to press our claim.

The IHO was established in 1921 as “an intergovernmental consultative and technical organization that coordinates the activities of the national hydrographic offices” of member-states, aimed at achieving “the greatest possible uniformity in nautical charts and documents.” This reminded me of the importance of maps in charting national and international boundaries, as well as the importance of names. I do not know if the Philippines has submitted nautical and historical documents to support the naming of the West Philippine Sea. Japan and Korea brought their issue to the IHO long ago.

Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs distributed to IHO delegates a handsome brochure, available in six languages, titled “The One and Only Name familiar to the International Community: Sea of Japan” to counter an aggressive South Korean claim set in a brochure issued by both the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Northeast Asian History Foundation titled “East Sea: the name from the Past, of the Present, and for the Future.” The IHO is being brought in to settle the dispute between Japan and Korea that will end up in revisions to IHO document “S-23” or “Limits of Oceans and Seas” that has recognized the “Sea of Japan” since 1929. Korea wants, at least, a second name, “East Sea,” to be recognized and reflected in S-23. Japan wants to keep the status quo. Naturally, the IHO did not want to get involved and advised Japan and Korea to settle the dispute between them. In 2002 a proposal was made to revise the map and leave the disputed area blank until the countries came to an agreement to be voted upon by all member-states. In 2007 a Solomonic proposal was thrown in to divide the sea in two so Japan could have its Sea of Japan, and Korea, its East Sea. The diplomatic solution so far has been to do nothing, leaving Japan and Korea to bring up the issue again during the ongoing 2012 IHO meeting.

Reading a recent feature on the dispute in the Wall Street Journal, I wondered whether the Philippines had attended previous IHO meetings and whether our representative had already put in a motion or lodged documents in the IHO secretariat to support the naming of the West Philippine Sea in international maps and other nautical documents. Some narrow-minded Filipinos think the IHO meeting is a mere junket, or an excuse to give the Namria administrator a Monaco holiday at taxpayers’ expense. But something as simple, almost trivial, as changing the name on a map can support our claim to the disputed Spratly island group that is supposed to have untapped oil and gas reserves, making it attractive to China, Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia, too.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Korea has the third largest delegation at the IHO conference, after the United States and the United Kingdom. Korea’s delegation includes historians armed with data gathered from months of research in the US Library of Congress’ map division, where they found “Sea of Korea” on 66 percent of the 228 maps they consulted. Undaunted, Japan sent its own historians to Washington to countercheck. They dug up 1,728 maps with 77 percent showing the “Sea of Japan.” Someone will now have to go through the late Carlos Quirino’s pioneering work “Philippine Cartography” (1959) to see how many times the West Philippine Sea appears instead of South China Sea.

We also need a translation of all historical references to the Philippines or the islands in ancient Chinese records. So far the earliest record found dates to the tenth century when an envoy from Brunei in the Chinese court described the location of his country as follows: “in the sea to the southwest of the Chinese capital, at 40-50 days’ sail from She-p’o [Java]; 40 days from San-fo-chi [Palembang in Sumatra]; 30 days from Mo-i; and as many days from Chan-ch’eng [Champa, now south Vietnam].” Mo-i, sometimes written as Ma-i or Ma-yi, is believed to be Mindoro. Unless something older turns up from the Chinese archives, this stray reference to “Mo-i” in the geographic work “T’ai p’ing huan yu chi” is the first time the Philippines appears in Chinese records. This is long before Magellan was born, long before the islands were given the name Islas de San Lazaro, then Islas del Poniente, and eventually Filipinas in honor of the Principe de Asturias, Felipe, who is better known in world history as Philip II.

Did the archipelago have a name before the 16th century or before the references in the Chinese records? Now, that’s a question we should’ve asked the late Ernie Baron.

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