In February 2020, a poster that criticizes radioactive safety of the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics was affixed on the wall of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul. Japan responded it sensitively. Yoshihide Suga who was Chief Cabinet Secretary at that time said "It shouldn't happen" and the Japanese conservative press criticized it. A poster produced by the Korean cyber diplomatic mission ‘VANK’ became a hot topic. Park Ki-tae, the founder of ‘VANK’, said the purpose of poster was that Japan is covering problems and distorting history through the Olympics, a global sporting event. What kind of organization is VANK, which corrects Korea's history and suggests problems in the world?
VANK is the abbreviation for 'VOLUNTARY AGENCY NETWORK OF KOREA' and the cyber diplomatic mission, established in 1999, is to promote Korea to foreigners. Its purpose is to organize activities and project for people through Youtube and the VANK blog. It sends protest letters, e-mails to domestic, foreign institutions and sites to correct errors. Spreading the truth about Korea is a final goal of VANK' so it undertook the PRKOREA Project, a national image project of the Republic of Korea. This project includes sending promotional video cards of Korea, Korean People's Internet Emergency Liaison Network, and Korean language education.
'VANK' works mainly to correct historical errors. Recently, it corrected subtitle errors such as ‘Riot’ about May 18 Gwangju Democratic Uprising background of 'The Taxi Driver' movie on Netflix. Despite VANK's active error correction activities, there are still cases where awareness and writing have not improved. The world's largest search engine Google identified Dokdo as Liancourt Rocks and East Sea as Japan of Sea is a name used by Japan for publicity in order not to recognize Korea's ownership of Dokdo. In particular, Google is making a double distortion. Despite covering same area, Google Korea use Dokdo and East Sea terminology, but Google Overseas Server use distorted facts. Through a "knowledge graph" that collects and provides information, Google has provided 13 countries with edited data only on what the Japanese government claims to be. VANK asserted Japan's digital imperialism in this situation. Japan does international lobbying to global companies in the 21st century to claim Dokdo and East Sea ownership. Dokdo is Korean territory, and practically dominate, but the formation of international opinion by Japan like changing area name is dangerous to history, so VANK said we should actively respond. What to think of VANK, which acts internationally, such as sending out protest letters and e-mails?
While the response is favorable, some misunderstand VANK as being an anti-Japanese organization because it criticizes Japan of Sea and the Rising Sun flag. For Japanese media, VANK is an anti-Japanese organization that falsely reports facts. In June 2020, Japan Business Press, a Japanese online current affairs business magazine, claimed that VANK distorts history. The organization's purpose is giving Japan a negative image and isolates Japan from the world through raising historical issues. The fact is that’s not true at all, but the article received much attention from the Japanese people. Regarding this controversy, Park Ki-tae said adamantly that VANK is not an anti-Japanese organization, it's not a Japan-blaming organization. It deals with domestic and international problems such as the Far-right politics of Japan, the Northeast Project of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and damage to historic sites. These activities show VANK is working hard in various ways to promote the right image of Korea.
VANK is an organization that seeks to protect Korea's identity. Exploring and establishing the identity of Korea is connected to learning about history and the characteristics of a nation. It reflects on the present, and helps the development for posterity by remembering and informing of mistakes. We should support the purpose of VANK to keep an eye on the distortion and oblivion of history and try to find the right image of Korea.
