The
East Sea is historically and geographically located northeast of
the Asian Continent and west of the Pacific Ocean and is surrounded
by the Maritime Province and Sakhalin Island in Russia and the Japanese
Islands. The East Sea was also called "Sea of Korea"
and "Sea of Chosun," and it has the Tatar Strait to its
north and the Korea Strait to its south.
It is said that
the East Sea was created about 30 million years ago in the early
quaternary period of the Cenozoic Era. There are two theories
on the cause of its formation; the ingression sea theory where what
was once a continent became a sea and the continental drift theory
where the Japanese Islands, originally attached to the continent,
moved east and formed a sea.
The East Sea forms
an ellipse with the northeast-southwest apse line. It is 1,700
kilometers long from north to south, maximum 1,100 kilometers wide
from east to west, and 1,361 meters deep in average. Particularly,
the area near the Maritime Province of Russia and the Korean Peninsula
is deeper and forms a steep slope of about 3,000 meters. The
deepest part is on the northeast near the Ogiri Island and 3,762
meters deep, and its capacity is 1.361 million cubic kilometers.
Particularly, the continental shelf with the depth
of water less than 200 meters is formed narrowly along the coast
and covers an area of 280,000 square kilometers. The deep
ocean floor with the depth of water exceeding 3,000 meters is 300,000
square kilometers in area.
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