an office in Gaya to export iron to Japan. That theory suggests Mimana to have been a diplomatic embassy and Jingū's conquest as a dramatization of efforts undertaken to establish that embassy. The topic of Mimana, such as its portrayal in Japanese textbooks, is still one of the controversies affecting Japanese-Korean relations. Linguistics According to several linguists, including Alexander Vovin and Juha Janhunen, Japonic languages were spoken in large parts of the southern Korean Peninsula. Vovin suggests that these "Peninsular Japonic languages" (now extinct), while initially co-existing with Koreanic languages from the north when speakers of these languages arrived in the southern Korean Peninsula, were eventually supplanted or replaced by the Koreanic languages with assimilation over time. Janhunen also suggests that early Baekje may have been predominantly Japonic-speaking before Peninsular Japonic was supplanted by Koreanic. This would suggest that, rather than the Japonic speakers crossing the sea from the Japanese Archipelago to occupy a part of the southern Korean Peninsula, the existing Peninsular Japonic speakers were expelled or assimilated by Koreanic speakers from the north. References Bibliography Further reading Grayson, James H. "Mimana, A Problem in Korean Historiography." Korea Journal 17, no. 8 (1977): 65-69 Lee, Chong-sik. "History and politics in Japanese-Korean relations: The textbook controversy and beyond." East Asia 2, no. 4 (1983): 69–93 Gaya confederacy Japan–Korea relations