[KS] Geographical database for Korea

[Dr. Eckart Dege]

Dear list:

As a geographer I am often asked by colleagues in Korean studies about a
geographical database for Korea. Historians want to localize the
archaeological sites in their database, or linguists want to regionalize
certain dialects, etc. Although I am still working on my own Geographic
Information System (GIS) for Korea with no end in sight (digitizing your
own maps is a very tedious job), I recently stumbled upon a program
which is very useful for a geographical database for Korea (or any other
part of the world). Let me share my experience with you.

The program is called Quo Vadis; it was originally written for
GPS-assisted off-road navigation. The price is $150.00, and you can
choose German, English or French as the language to communicate with it.
It comes with a world-wide database of geographical names (populated
places, railroad stations, mountains, rivers, etc.). This database
contains 40,162 place names for South Korea and 37,545 place names for
North Korea (in McCune-Reischauer without diacritics). Each entry in the
database contains the exact geographic coordinates, and these
coordinates are the link between the database and a  map. The program
does not contain a map of Korea (since Korea is not a place you
necessarily turn to for off-road driving), but you can import your own
maps. You can take any map, scan it and import it into the program's map
database. Before you can use it, you have to geocode it (for which the
programm provides a very easy-to-use tool, so geocoding a map is done in
about 2 minutes).

I am currently using the 1:250,000 scale maps (22 sheets for the whole
Korean peninsula). If you want more detail, you can scan the official
South Korean maps in the scale of 1:50,000 (239 sheets), 1:25,000 (762
sheets) or 1:5,000 (about 15,000 sheets) for the South and the excellent
Russian military maps 1:100,000, which are available now, for the North.

If you mark an entry in your place name database (let's say Ch'unch'on),
a 1:1 section of the right map sheet will pop up on your screen with a
marker neatly in the middle of Ch'unch'on (in this case). The program
automatically chooses the right map sheet, and if you have maps of the
same area in different scales in your map database it will always choose
the one with the largest scale (i.e. the most detail) first.

You can't edit the database that comes with the program, but you can
create your own databases with the program (for the villages with the
famous Cholla dialect, for your archaeological sites, or your favorite
restaurants for posint'ang). You just click in the map on the point you
want to enter into your database, give it a name or number and (if you
like) a description. These points are stored in databases for so called
"waypoints", which operate the same way as the place name database that
comes with the program.

If you carry a GPS receiver when travelling in Korea you can also record
your tracks across the country and make it visible on the map (including
the exact date and time you have been at any point and the speed with
which you moved - no excuse, you were speeding on that small stretch of
the Yongdong Expressway where there was no traffic jam). I used this
system in North Korea around Paektu-san (where there were not even roads
on the map) - it worked just great.

Before I close, I should destroy your dream that this program is the
right thing for the good old computer you got in the late 80s. You need
Windows 95, 98, NT or 2000 as operating system (the newer the better)
and at least 64 MB RAM (more is better), and you need some free disk
space to store the program and the database (the place name database for
Asia alone takes 140.7 MB). The scanned and geocoded maps can be
accessed when stored on a CD ROM (access is faster though, if you store
them on your hard disk). The size of a scanned map depends on how much
detail and how much color you want. With my maps I was very generous,
since I just put a new 28 GB hard disk into my computer. So my maps take
up 40.2 MB per sheet, i.e. about 16 sheets fit onto one CD ROM.

For most of you this will be too technical (for this you have the delete
buttom), but for the colleagues who want to regionalize the results of
their research, this could be a solution.

Eckart Dege



--
Prof. Dr. Eckart Dege
Geographisches Institut
Universitaet Kiel
D-24098 Kiel
Germany
Tel. (office) +49 431 880-2941
Tel. (home)   +49 4342 889695
Fax  (office) +49 431 880-4658
Fax  (home)   +49 4342 889694



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