----- Forwarded Message -----
From: "Yoo Kwang-On" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "이기봉박사" <[log in to unmask]>, [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, July 17, 2013 11:57:58 AM
Subject: 독일에서 발견된 순 한글 지도

I would like to introduce to the list news of a late 17th-18th century Korean map on which all of the district names are written exclusively in Hangul. Those who are familiar with traditional Korean maps will know that they give the names of Korean provinces and districts and all marginal notes only in their Chinese form up until the last quarter of the 19th century. 

Unfortunately, this map, which came to my attention last Fall when its owner contacted me, bears neither a title nor any clue as to its maker. The owner, who lives in Paris, bought the map on a whim at an auction in Germany a year and a half ago. 

Going by the cartographic method and handwriting, I see the maker as an amateur and probably a self-trained cartographer. Cartographically the map is in the traditional "ChOng Ch'Ok" style, which goes back to the mid-15th and lasted into the mid-18th century, when Korean cartographers absorbed Western techniques that yielded a much more accurate outline of the Korean peninsula, and in particular the outline of Korea's northern frontier. The hangul place names and notes reflect the Korean orthography current in the late 17th through the late 18th centuries. The paper has been estimated as of the same 
time span. 

There was a map made in 1845 by the Korean Catholic convert Kim TaegOn that used Hangul for its place names and other indications. Kim was ordained as a priest in Macao and later served as a Korean guide for the French fleet active in Korean waters during the 1840s. But his map is strictly in the Western cartographic tradition and based on the western methods then current. That map has always been in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and only very rarely displayed. It has never been shown in Korea, although Korean historians who visited Paris have commented on it and published a picture (which I foolishly forgot to note for myself). 

There are a few Chinese characters on the map: the names of Paektusan and the island of of Nokto ("Deer Island" 鹿島, under the administration of Sunch'On in ChOlla Province), and a coding note using the character 半(반), which I cannot explain but appears next to the name of several districts in PyOngan Province (which was not then divided into North and South). Other than that, everything is in Hangul. Perhaps the mapper thought greater dignity went to Paektusan with Chinese characters, but if so, it's hard to see why Nokto should have the same treatment 

At the request of the owner, I wrote an article, "A Unique Korean Map" describing and analyzing the map. It was published last week on the website of 
the East Asia Institute in Seoul. The link to the article is below. At 
the bottom of p.16 of the article there is a direct link to the map 
itself ( http://www.eai.or.kr/images/Old_Korean_Map.jpg ). 

http://www.eai.or.kr/type/ panelView.asp?bytag=p&catcode=&code=eng_ repo rt&idx=12287&page=1 

Gari Ledyard