Name Games - Korea/Japan or Japan/Korea?
The Japanese and Korean organizing committees for the 2002 World Cup continue to squabble long after their acrimonious bidding war to stage the competition was supposedly settled by FIFA awarding them the event as co-hosts in 1996.
This time the argument is about names and precedence. The Korean organizing committee (KOWOC) lodged an official complaint with FIFA on January 18 after the Japanese organizing committee (JAWOC) changed the wording on application forms for tickets to be sold domestically from February 15 2001 onwards from "2002 FIFA World Cup Korea/Japan" to read "2002 FIFA World Cup Japan/Korea" in Chinese characters, thereby reneging on the earlier agreement. The Japanese side argued that the official wording should apply only to the English title and not to domestic promotions and publicity campaigns in Japanese.
The aptly named FIFA secretary general, Michel Zen-Ruffinen sided with South Korea in the dispute and issued a letter of warning to the Japanese side instructing them to follow the agreed formula. In a show of defiance, Japanese soccer officials seemed at first to be about to drop "Korea & Japan" altogether from the application forms for tickets and the tickets themselves, or go ahead with the name change putting Japan first.
In Japan, Japanese comes first
It is uncertain whether JAWOC will swallow its pride and abide by the FIFA ruling or leave out reference to the two host countries altogether in the naming of the event. The latter seems more likely at this stage. At a FIFA meeting in Cannes on January 29 JAWOC and KOWOC agreed to a period of truce to assess the situation further and come up with a compromise solution suitable to both parties.
What does that mean?
Why is "Japan" before "Korea"?
Well...
What?!
That's the Japanese
way: we read from
right to left!
So that means people
looking at this cartoon
are reading what you
say first?! Sure, man!
Come over here
and switch places!
