The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) will decide this week on whether to adopt a new way of naming seas that is expected to affect a long-running dispute between South Korea and Japan over what to call the East Sea.

In its virtual general assembly to be held from Monday through Wednesday, the IHO will announce whether it will revise the "S-23," an IHO standard for world map production that marked the body of water between South Korea and Japan as the Sea of Japan, not the East Sea.

The IHO will decide whether to adopt a revision, known as "S-130," that calls for referring to all seas by numbers, rather than specific names, according to the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries.

IHO Secretary General Mathias Jonas has proposed the "system of unique numerical identifiers."

Ministry officials said that the proposal has a high chance of passage as many IHO member countries are in support of the idea.

The decision is expected to be available from around 9 p.m. on Monday (Korean time) at the earliest.

South Korea has long campaigned for its own name for the East Sea, or for the use of both names at the same time, arguing that the Sea of Japan is a legacy of Tokyo's imperialistic past, including the 1910-45 colonization of the Korean Peninsula.

The name Sea of Japan was registered in the early 1920s when Korea was a Japanese colony. (Yonhap)