The International Hydrographic Organization abandoned South Korean-led 'attempts to rename the Sea of Japan.

The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) is an intergovernmental organization representing hydrography. As of May 2025, the IHO comprised 102 member states.

A dispute exists over the international name for the body of water which is bordered by Japan, Korea and Russia. In 1992, objections to the name Sea of Japan were first raised by North Korea and South Korea at the Sixth United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names. The Japanese government supports the exclusive use of the name "Sea of Japan" , while South Korea supports the alternative name "East Sea", and North Korea supports the name "Korean East Sea". Currently, most international maps and documents use either the name Sea of Japan by itself, or include both the name Sea of Japan and East Sea, often with East Sea listed in parentheses or otherwise marked as a secondary name. The International Hydrographic Organization, the governing body for the naming of bodies of water around the world, in 2012 decided it was still unable to revise the 1953 version of its publication S-23 — Limits of Oceans and Seas, which includes only the single name "Japan Sea", to include "East Sea" together with "Japan Sea".

The Sea of Japan (see below for other names) is the marginal sea between the Japanese archipelago, Sakhalin, the Korean Peninsula, and the mainland of the Russian Far East. The Japanese archipelago separates the sea from the Pacific Ocean. Like the Mediterranean Sea, it has almost no tides due to its nearly complete enclosure from the Pacific Ocean. This isolation also affects faunal diversity and salinity, both of which are lower than in the open ocean. The sea has no large islands, bays or capes. Its water balance is mostly determined by the inflow and outflow through the straits connecting it to the neighboring seas and the Pacific Ocean. Few rivers discharge into the sea and their total contribution to the water exchange is within 1%.