VANK

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VANK
Hangul:	반크
Revised Romanization:	Bankeu
McCune-Reischauer:	Pank'ŭ

VANK or Voluntary Agency Network of Korea is a non-governmental South Korean organization made up of volunteers. It states that its purpose is to "enhanc[e] the image of Korea on the road." VANK links Korean teenagers with teenagers around the world to benefit both by cultural and historical enrichment through penpals and chatting.^{[citation needed]}

VANK also actively attempts to impose different historical interpretations, from the Korean perspective, on the Internet. VANK is famous for sending massive amounts of e-mails to webmasters who are in charge of websites that contain, in their opinion, distorted information about Korea.^{[citation needed]} Webmasters have complained about the enormous amounts of e-mails they receive from VANK and as a result have been forced to change the contents of their websites in order to stop it.

On August 18, 2005, Google Earth's name for Sea of Japan was changed to the name East Sea being displayed first with Sea of Japan in parenthesis, where formerly the opposite had been the case. This resulted in Japanese 2channel users protesting the web server of VANK by posting large volumes of messages containing insults about Korea and VANK's efforts. [1]

However, the change was originally proposed by someone in Google Group Korea, and whether the user was related to VANK is unknown. [2] As of 2005, Google Earth displays both East Sea and Sea of Japan as equal names.