Maps of Korea

Extract

As compared with some other countries of the world, Korea is a well mapped land. This brief review lists some of the major maps and sets of maps of the peninsula which are useful to those interested in Korea.

Old Korean maps. Korean scholars for their use in studies of Chinese and Korean literature and for their administrative work if they were chosen for government posts prepared small hand atlases. Some of these atlases have been collected by Western scholars and copies are found in the Library of Congress, American Geographical Society Library, New York Public Library and a number of other map collections. These atlases are usually made up of maps of the world, China, Korea, the eight provinces of Korea, Japan and the Loo Choo Islands.They are hand drawn and copied from some prototype. On their margins or on the reverse side of each map are brief gazetteers or comments. A description of the China-centered world map was given by Homer B. Hulburt, “An ancient map of the world,” Bulletin of the American geographical society, 36 (1904), 600–05. The atlas was described and reproduced in part by H. Cordier in Description d'un atlas Sino-Coréen. Manuscript du British Museum (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1896). A Japanese, Otani, prepared a 37 page catalogue of old Korean maps which was published by the Keijo Imperial University, Seoul, in 1933, but a copy of this has not been found in American libraries.