[KS] Old Korean maps of Europe?

[Joy Kim]

Scanned images of old Korean maps available freely on the Web:

http://www.dlibrary.go.kr/WONMUN/index_codetree.jsp?v_dbid=NCL_DB_Q
(Select "Ko chido" in the database directory)

http://www.knowledge.go.kr/index.jsp 
(Select "Yoksa" and then "Chido" in the Directory)

While on the subject of historic maps, I invite you to explore the "Sea of Korea Map Collection" at the Korean Heritage Library of the University of Southern California.  Note that these are mostly WESTERN (not Korean) old maps.  This collection excites many Korean people because most maps in the collection denote the body of water between Korea and Japan as "Sea of Korea" rather than the more commonly known "Sea of Japan"

http://www.usc.edu/isd/libraries/collections/sea_of_korea/.
(Press the "Show me the records" at the top right corner--easy to miss-- to see all the maps in the collection) 

Joy Kim
Curator, Korean Heritage Library http://www.usc.edu/isd/korean 
University of Southern California
University Park
Los Angeles, CA90089-0154
Tel: 213-740-2329 / Fax: 213-740-7437


----- Original Message -----
From: gkl1 at columbia.edu
Date: Tuesday, April 25, 2006 11:13 pm
Subject: Re: [KS] Old Korean maps of Europe?
To: Korean Studies Discussion List <Koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>

>   My monograph "Cartography in Korea" discusses the famous Kangnido
> map of 1402, a Buddhist world map of the 12th century, an 18th
> century Korean globe showing the entire world including Antarctica,
> and the very popular Ch'Onhado of the 17th-19th centuries, which I
> believe was a kind of folk literati spinoff of the Kangnido.
> There's nothing in any of these maps which has resonance with the
> concept "medieval," which pretty much is valent only in the
> historiography of Western civilization.
>   The Kangnido (the popular though abbreviated title) was a genuine
> world map which showed Korea and China as the core, with Japan
> tossed (literally) into the ocean on the east, and with  India,
> Africa, the Arabian peninsula, the Mediterranean and Black Sea
> areas, and a vague outline of the European peninsula added on the
> western side. The latter components came from a 14th century
> Chinese map based on an Islamic original. There are several Korean
> copies of the 15th and 16th centuries, the oldest of which dates
> from around 1471; unfortunately, all of them were stolen during the
> Imjin wars and are now owned by Japanese institutions. The maps is
> huge-- 164x172cm.
> 
>   See Gari Ledyard, "Cartography in Korea," in J.B. Harley and
> David Woodward, eds., <The History of Cartography>, vol 2, part 2
> <Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies>
> (Univ Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 235-345, of which the section on
> world maps, pp. 243-267 (several illustrations, including a nice
> color photo of the Kangnido on the cover jacket, which probably
> will be missing from library copies; but there are black-and-white
> versions with the article and in the following:
> 
>  I also wrote a condensed version of my discussion ("The Kangnido,
> a Korean World Map") in <Circa 1492: Art in the Age of
> Exploration>. This was the catalogue (1992) for the National
> Gallery of Art show "Circa 1492," on the 500th anniversary of the 
> Columbus voyage, which so far is the only occasion on which the
> Kangnido has left Japan (it's held by Ry^ukoku Daigaku in Ky^oto).
> 
>   In the Kyujanggak Library of Seoul National University there is
> also a highly researched and beautifully executed modern Korean
> hand copy, done during the 1980s.
> 
> Gari Ledyard
> 
> Quoting DeberniereTorrey <djtorrey at yahoo.com>:
> 
> > Dear List Members,
> >
> > On behalf of a colleague, I'm inquiring to see if
> > anyone knows of any medieval Korean map that includes
> > Europe or any other part of the western world?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Deberniere Torrey
> >
> > Dept. of Comparative Literature
> > Penn State University
> >
> > __________________________________________________
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> 
> 
> 
>