Re-examination of the “Joseon Map” in Fuchs' The Complete Atlas of the Imperial Territory (Kangxi Period)

“Hwang yeo jeon lam do皇輿全覽圖(Atlas of the Chinese Empire)” of Kangxi Reign was the first map in traditional Chinese cartography to be created through the use of latitude and longitude measurements, which included the “Joseon do朝鲜圖(Map of Korea)”. Initially, Korea refused Mukden's request for a map, but unable to resist his repeated appeals, then handed over a Complete Map of Korea which neither overly detailed nor excessively simplified. Although Korea possessed detailed maps from the Border Defense Council of Joseon (Bi byeon sa備邊司), they declined to provide it due to the distrust toward the Qing Dynasty. This reluctance was particularly influenced by the Sino-barbarian view that “the Hu(barbarians) cannot rule for a hundred years”, then Korea sought to prevent the leakage of geographical information to the Qing Dynastry. Additionally, constrained by the “Nam han san seong Maeng yak南漢山城盟約(the Covenant after Bingzi battle (Qing invasion of Joseon))”, Korea was prohibited from constructing new or repairing old cities, hence they fearred that information about existing cities and defense installations would be detected by the Qing Dynasty. The toponymic features of the “Joseon do朝鲜圖(Map of Korea)” is the different label method between the six inland provinces and the border regions (Hamgyong-do and Pyeongan-do). It primarily labelled county-level place names and mountain names (also label the name of rivers, islands, military camps and naval bases) in the inland provinces, inheriting the “Donglam do東覽圖 Map of the East”(1530) from “Sinjeung donggug yeoji seunglam新增東國輿地勝覽 Revised Augmented Survey of the Geography of Korea in the earlier period of Korea”. In contrast, in the border regions, beyond the name of counties and mountains, it also labelled numerous names of rivers and fortresses, marked with transliterated toponyms that contain many Chinese character errors. This indicates that the Qing collected additional place names during border surveys that were not present in the original Korean base map. Many errors emerged during the compilation of toponyms in the “Joseon do朝鲜圖(Map of Korea)”. For example, four counties north of Tanchon in Hamgyong-do were omitted, and 1-2 counties was missing in each province, as a result, in a total of 10 fewer county names than the actual number. Additionally, 55 cases of incorrect Chinese character annotations were found, caused by miscopying homoglyphs when transcribing the base map. While the county names on the “Joseon do朝鲜圖(Map of Korea)” reflect changes of the counties after the creation of “Sinjeung donggug yeoji seunglam新增東國輿地勝覽Revised Augmented Survey of the Geography of Korea in the earlier period of Korea” in 1530, but the defensive information such as military camps and naval bases remained unchanged. Thus, it has certain limitations to determine the map's production period by the locations of these camps. However, analyzing the production period from the addition of new counties on the “Joseon do朝鲜圖(Map of Korea)” we can know that the base map was drawn after 1651(the upper limit), since it includes counties established between 1632 and 1651, such as Yeongju, Chaein, Chugok, and Geumcheon. The lower limit is 1713, as this was the year Mukden traveled to Korea to obtain the Complete Map of Korea. Further refinement suggests that if the absence of Yeongyang and Sunheung in Gyeongsang-do (counties abolished between 1677 and 1682) was not an omission but related to their abolition, the base map could be dated to the period between 1677 and 1682.