A group of high school students were standing on the streets of the district of Myeongdong in Korea holding colorful plank cards and posters of a small yet controversial group of islets between the Korean peninsula and Japan.

"Through our Myeongdong Project we wanted to inform people about Dokdo and correct their misguided thoughts on Dokdo" Bora Han leader of club VANK@GAFL said. She is a junior at Gyeonggi Academy of Foreign Languages. "We planned this project several months beforehand and we dedicated a lot of our time into preparing for it."

Han and fellow students at GAFL are part of a school club called VANK@GAFL which stands for Voluntary Agency Network of Korea at Gyeonggi Academy of Foreign Languages. VANK is a ''cyber diplomat'' group that promotes the country of Korea to the world through activities like correcting wrongly mentioned Korea history and exchanging emails with foreign pen pals about Korea. On July 31 the club students took to the streets to promote Dokdo - the islets Japan calls Takeshima - as Korean territory. It is a land of fiery dispute between the two countries.

"It was really difficult to explain to the Japanese tourists about Dokdo" another tenth grader explained. "They didn''t know Dokdo and only knew the islets as Takeshima and when I asked them what country they belonged to they shouted out ''Japan!"

The students tried to explain to Korean citizens and foreign tourists at Myeongdong the situation surrounding the islets information about the islets the islets'' importance to Korea and why the islets should be rightfully claimed as the territory of Korea.

"I was surprised when some foreigners answered that Dokdo was the land of China after I asked them what country they thought Dokdo belonged to but after explaining to them why Dokdo was Korean territory I was glad to see that they all understood" a tenth grade club member said.

Dokdo (also called the Liancourt Rocks) is a group of small islets in the East Sea (Sea of Japan). Although claimed by both Korea and Japan the islets are currently administered by South Korea which has its Coast Guard stationed there.

The VANK@GAFL students actively promoted Dokdo for approximately five hours despite the scorching sun. They encountered many people including Park Moon Gook National Assembly Member who encouraged the students in their activities.

"Overall I think that our Myeongdong Project was a big success" Han said. "I was really worried at first about how well we would do and if we were actually prepared enough to promote Dokdo but I''m so thankful that everything really worked out well and we got to meet a lot of people."