Korea's time has come: at the end of the year it will have its first Ikea store which, with a surface area of 59 square meters and over 300 employees, will also be the largest store among those that the Swedish company has scattered throughout the world. Among Asian countries, Korea arrives late in the large Ikea family: in fact, China and Japan are in the lead, respectively with 16 and 8 stores, followed by small Taiwan with 5 stores, Hong Kong with 3, Singapore with 2, while Indonesia , Malaysia and Thailand each have one.
The inauguration will take place on December 18, but the press has already been admitted to a preliminary visit to the huge building erected in Gwangmyeong, a city that forms an urban continuum with the northern part of Seoul. The new Ikea store hasn't opened yet and controversy is already flourishing. Among the items on sale – already visible on the site and in the catalog – there is also, as in all other Ikea stores around the world, a decorative world map to hang on the wall. The sea between the coasts of Japan, Russia and the two Koreas is designated on the world map as the "Sea of Japan". This was enough to make the Koreans see red.
The name of that stretch of sea has in fact been the subject of a dispute since, in 1992, on the occasion of the sixth United Nations Conference on the standardization of geographical names, Korea protested arguing that the current name should be replaced by that of "sea Oriental". The controversy has gone on for years, with many learned arguments produced by Korea and Japan, and is still going on, although the International Hydrographic Organization decided in 2012 not to change the now widely used name of Mar on charts and maps. of Japan. But the Koreans are not into it and now they are taking it out on Ikea; the matter seems to be becoming serious, so much so that Andre Schmidtgall, sales manager, said he wanted to apologize, on behalf of the company, for not having thought of adding the denomination of "eastern sea" on paper as well as that of "mar of Japan". "We are well aware of the seriousness of the matter" he said "and we apologize again".
