Chapter 10
Colours and Readability in the Daedongnyeojido: New Insights into a Map
of Korea from the Nineteenth Century
Sang-hoon Jang and Diana Lange
Abstract
The Daedongnyeojido 大東輿地圖 or “Territorial Map of the
Great East [Korea]” is considered as the most significant work
of Korean cartography due to its unusual size, accuracy and
practicability of use. This woodblock printed map, of which
33 copies have survived, was made in 1861 by Kim Jeong-ho
金正浩 (ca. 1804–ca. 1866). About two thirds of these prints
show variations in their colouring. In the following years manuscript copies of Daedongnyeojido were produced – also in
various colouring. After providing an overview of the role of
colours in Korean cartography, this paper aims to classify the
Daedongnyeojido in the tradition of colouring Korean maps. It
will examine how the various colourings differ from each other
and will discuss for what reasons and in which way the colourist used colours to reflect specific information on the maps.
Furthermore the paper will provide an insight into the colourants used for the colouring of two map sets kept in the Museum
am Rothenbaum in Hamburg.
Keywords
East Asian cartography – Korean cartography – East Asian
maps – Korean maps – colouring Korean maps – Kim Jeongho – Daedongnyeojido
1
The Role of Colours in Korea’s Cartographic
Tradition
In August 2021 the exhibition “Colour meets map” was
opened in the Museum am Rothenbaum in Hamburg.
In the centre of the exhibition hall, a giant map of Korea
consisting of numerous sections was installed in a large
historical glass pavilion: the Daedongnyeojido 大東輿
地圖 or “Territorial Map of the Great East [Korea]”. The
map was chosen as an exhibition highlight for good reasons: it represents a highlight of Korean cartography and
at the same time provides important insights into the
practices of colouring Korean maps (see Figure 10.1).
Korea has a tradition of mapmaking that extends back
to the Three Kingdoms Period (57 BCE–668 CE). As an
important means of understanding the state’s territory,
and a necessary tool for state government, maps were also
produced and used in the Unified Silla Period (668–936)
and the Goryeo Dynasty (936–1392). Records of maps
appear in the Samguksagi 三國史記 (“History of the
Three Kingdoms”, published in 1145) and in the Goryeosa
高麗史 (“History of Goryeo”, published in 1451). The fruits
of this cartographic tradition were inherited by the Joseon
Dynasty (1392–1897).
Not long after Joseon was established, a world map
came to be produced: the Kangnido (short for Honilgangni
yeokdaegukdojido 混一疆理歷代國都之圖 or “Map of
Integrated Lands and Regions of Historical Countries and
Capitals”) – the oldest surviving Korean-made map, and
one of the oldest East Asian1 world maps. It was painted in
1402 and copied in the 1470s on silk.2 Several colours were
used in its production: while the land is left uncoloured,
the oceans, lakes and rivers are coloured dark green or
blue. Red coloured signs were used to present places on
the map. However, most surviving Korean national and
provincial maps date from the seventeenth century or
later.3
Maps of Korea after the Kangnido are usually classified
into four groups: (1) the fifteenth to the mid-seventeenth
century maps made in Jeong Cheok 鄭陟 style, (2) the
Sungnam style maps, popular until the end of the nineteenth century; (3) the Jeong Sang-gi 鄭尙驥 style maps,
which began to appear during the first half of the eighteenth century and were common until the mid-nineteenth; and (4) Kim Jeong-ho’s 金正浩 maps, produced
from 1834 to 1864.4 Although many Korean maps might
differ about geographical information and even graphic
styles, they share similarities in their colouring. Most
1 For the purposes of this paper, East Asia consists of China, Korea
and Japan.
2 Ledyard 1994: 245.
3 Ledyard 2008.
4 Ledyard 1994.
© Sang-hoon Jang and Diana Lange, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004467361_011
This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
133
Colours and Readability in the Daedongnyeojido
Figure 10.1
The Daedongnyeojido 大東輿地圖 or “Territorial Map of the Great East [Korea]” on display in the exhibition “Colour meets
map” in the Museum am Rothenbaum in Hamburg.
© Museum am Rothenbaum (MARKK), Hamburg, Photography Paul Schimweg
of them follow the characteristic colour system5 of East
Asian maps: leaving the land uncoloured and colouring
the rivers and the sea. Only topographical elements such
as mountains were coloured. This colour system can be
observed on numerous Korean maps.
The colours on many maps were based on the same
colour scheme6 all over East Asia, including Korean maps.
The colours given to the topographical elements relate in
most cases to the natural appearance of these elements.
The sea and rivers are usually green or blue. The most distinctive characteristic of Korean maps is the strong visual
representation of mountains, showing the special physical
and spiritual relationship that Korean people have with
5 A ‘colour system’ can be described as the way a map is painted; that
is, which parts are painted. In this connection we can distinguish
between full-colouring, spot-colouring, or non-colouring (see also
Lange 2022).
6 In the context of maps, a colour scheme refers to the choice of specific colours for the different elements of the map (see also Lange
2022).
their mountains.7 These mountains were usually coloured
in blue, green and brownish tones, but sometimes also left
uncoloured. Other features and lettering were drawn in
black. We often find similar colours used for the same purposes on Korean maps: red was used for cities, military-related features, roads and some settlements.
Administrative information on East Asian maps was
coded using geometric shapes, the additional application
of colours played different roles in the different regions.8
Korean mapmakers developed a complex combination
of text and image to demarcate different administrative
bodies: coloured circles (or other shapes like ovals and
squares) were used for administrative units, with name,
type and the largest place name often written inside the
circle. The place’s status was indicated immediately to the
right of the shape. Not all place signs had to be abstract.
7 Geomancy (Korean pungsu, Chinese feng shui 風水) was a strong
influence on traditional Korean cartography, mountain ranges
played a crucial role in this as the ‘veins’ of cosmic energy streams.
8 For maps, the colour code defines the range of colours selected to
convey specific information about the places and features represented on the map (see also Lange 2022).
134
Jang and Lange
Some functions were indicated pictorially – such as
houses, temples and walled enclosures – and illustrated
in naturalistic or schematic style, and may be coloured.
The Chinese five elements colour theory or ohaeng
(Chin. wuxing 五行) played an important role in the context of colour schemes used for the colouring of such
shapes on Korean maps. The direction and relative position of each Korean province have a specific colour associated with the five elements theory, according to which
the centre is yellow, east is green or blue,9 south is red,
west is white, and north is black. The names of the district
magistracies in each province were usually shown in or
next to coloured shapes, colour-coded according to the
province they belong to. For example, the district magistracies of the ‘central’ province around the Korean capital
were usually coloured in yellow.10 This colour scheme was
used in Korea for the first time in 1463 by the cartographer
Jeong Cheok 鄭陟 (1390–1475) on his Tongguk chido 東
國地圖 (“Map of the Eastern country [Korea]”) and had
a major influence on the colouring of later maps.11 With
occasional divergences and variations, it continued to be
used well into the nineteenth century.12
Particularly from the eighteenth century on, the production of maps in Korea saw a massive boom. Among
the most popular and most used formats in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries were so-called hand atlases.13
Although for the colouring of the maps in these atlases
only a few colours were used on most of the maps (in
many cases just red and blue, in other cases yellow was
added as well), the mapmakers found methods to convey
a great bandwidth of information by skilfully combining
9
10
11
12
13
Green and blue are often considered (two shades of) the same
colour in East Asian countries.
The colour yellow also played an important role for the colouring of Royal palaces on Korean maps.
Ledyard 1994: 291–92 and Pegg 2014: 11.
See for example in Sang-hoon Jang et al. 2018: mid-nineteenth
century Haejwa Jeondo 海左全圖 (pp. 10–13; https://www
.museum.go.kr/site/eng/relic/search/view?relicId=2502), late
eighteenth century Comprehensive Geographic Map of [the
Country in] the Left [Eastern] Sea [Korea] 海左一統全圖
(pp. 34–35), mid-eighteenth c. Dongguk Daejido/Grand Map of
the Eastern Country [Korea] 東國大地圖 (pp. 78–83; https://
www.museum.go.kr/site/eng/relic/search/view?relicId=4336).
These atlases, produced in a large variety of designs, catered for
the need to show Korea from different perspectives: as part of
the world and East Asia, as an overall region and divided into
its various provinces. In this respect, they embodied Korea’s
perception of itself as an independent nation and at the same
time underlined the importance of its relations with its neighbours. For further information on the “atlas production trend”
see Dorofeeva-Lichtmann 2019.
the colours. For example, on province maps the names
of the different administrative units are often given in
rounded or rectangular frames. These cartouches (mostly
including important information, such as the administrative rank, the distance of the place to the capital Seoul,
etc.) were normally outlined in red. All Korean provinces
were divided into two sectors with regard to military
administration. On some maps the division into a “right”
(右 ) and a “left” (左 ) sector was marked by red lines, the
designation being reinforced by either red or blue colouring. Korean atlases illustrate in exemplary form the use of
colours to communicate administrative information on
maps.
Next to these standardized atlases, town and county
maps as well as military maps were made by a great variety
of local hands in different styles. Since the background of
most local mapmakers was more in painting and drawing
than in cartography, the results are evident in hundreds
of local maps in the style of bird’s-eye view landscapes.
Thus, it is not surprising that their colouring follows the
principles of landscape painting and to find the same colourants generally used in traditional painting applied to
these maps.14
This explains why not much has been written about
the processes of map colouring and the role of the colourist in East Asia per se. The presumption is that professional map colourists did not exist. The colouring
of manuscript maps was almost certainly done by the
mapmakers themselves. The colouring of printed maps
seems to have been executed by different groups of people, such as painters and untrained workers. No colouring
manuals for maps comparable to those in Europe could
be found for East Asia and colouring instructions by the
mapmakers have only survived for a few Korean maps.
One of them is attributed to the scholar and cartographer
Jeong Sang-gi 鄭尙驥 (1678–1752).15 In the foreword of an
album entitled P’alto chido 八道地圖 (“Maps of the Eight
Provinces”),16 which was most probably made by Jeong
Sang-gi, the author stated concerning the use of colours
14
15
16
Ledyard 1994: 236.
He significantly enhanced the accuracy of Joseon maps by using
a new scale in the eighteenth century, the so-called Baek-ri cheok
(a “hundred ri units to one” scale). The scale itself was also indicated in the map so that readers could calculate real distances
between locations on their own. See Yang 1995: 89.
Joeng Sang-gi’s album was very popular in the late eighteenth
century as well as the nineteenth. His son Jeong Hang-ryeong 鄭
恒齡 (1710–1770) and grandson Jeong Weon-rim 鄭元霖 (1731–
ca. 1800) continued the family’s cartography business, and their
efforts paved the way for the future accomplishments of Shin
Gyeong-jun and Kim Jeong-ho (Oh 2015: 263).
135
Colours and Readability in the Daedongnyeojido
(and mixes of colours): “On the assignment of distinctive colouring, Kyonggi is solid yellow, Hoso white with
red, Honam [Cholla] solid red, Yongnam [Kyongsang]
blue with red, Yong-dong [Kangwon] solid blue, Haeso
[Hwanghae] solid white, Kwanso white with black, and
Hamgyong solid black]. Green is used for mountains, blue
for rivers. Red lines indicate major routes on land or sea;
yellow lines show borders between the left and right divisions [of provinces]. A platform-shaped sign with dotted
red marks a beacon; a crenellation with solid white indicates a mountain fortress [sansong]. If garrisons or district
towns are walled, a white line is drawn outside; if post stations or command posts are within enclosures, they are
distinguished by blue and yellow, respectively”.17
The uniform colour systems, colour schemes and colour codes suggests that they were not developed individually by their makers (and colourists) but followed fixed
rules. The signs used on many Korean maps are generally treated as self-explanatory and it was rather unusual
to provide a legend to standardized signs. Taking these
aspects into consideration, it might be possible that the
use of specific colours for the colouring of maps and the
respective rules had been internalized to a very great
extent by mapmakers (and colourists).
The colouring of maps in Europe and East Asia has
gone through very different phases, in particular from the
seventeenth century onwards. While publishing houses
played a significant role in the development of colouring
European maps,18 the colouring of maps in East Asia experienced less change over that period. Although it is not yet
clear when exactly colours became functional on Chinese,
Korean and Japanese maps, the use of colours (and signs)
on maps in East Asia was standardized at an earlier date
than in Europe. The most significant changes to the colouring of East Asia maps occurred with two developments: (1)
the introduction of European maps in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries by Jesuit missionaries in China19
17
18
19
Ledyard 1994: 307–9.
For a detailed discussion of this issue see van der Linde 2020 and
Lange and van der Linde 2021.
With the arrival of European missionaries in the late sixteenth
century, Jesuits added to the geographical knowledge that the
Chinese already had at that time. With the help of the Chinese
converts, Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) produced different versions
of a Chinese mappa mundi. The Kun yu wanguo quan tu 坤輿
萬國全圖 (‘Complete Map of the Myriad Kingdoms of the
World’) – printed in 1602 by Ricci and his Chinese collaborators
Zhang Wentao 張文濤 and Li Zhizao 李之藻 – was the earliest
known Chinese world map in the style of European maps. It followed the Typus Orbis Terrarum by the cartographer Abraham
and (2) the import of artificial colourants and their recipes (such as Prussian blue) from Europe to China from the
eighteenth century onwards. However, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries China, Japan and Korea
did not accept many new European ideas and preferred
to create maps maintaining their own visual traditions.20
The outward appearance of the maps in East Asia only
changed step by step towards a more European style in
the second half of the nineteenth century – including
the style of colouring and use of colours. The most striking change in this context was the beginning of the fullcolouring of land and non-colouring of the sea and rivers. In particular, the different administrative units on
Japanese, Chinese and Korean maps were distinguished
by full-colouring of the respective areas. The adaption
of this colour system started in Japan in the seventeenth
century,21 followed by China in the eighteenth century.22
Korea was less sensitive to European ideas, the full-colouring
of land areas to distinguish administrative units did not
appear on Korean maps before the nineteenth century.23
20
21
22
23
Ortelius (1527–1598) which was based on a so-called oval projection. For the Chinese version of the map China was placed
at the centre. See for instance Elman 2005: 127–33. European
cartographic methods and Ricci’s map had also influenced
Japanese map-making since the late sixteenth century. Japanese
world maps made in the seventeenth century and based on
European models belonged to the category of so-called Nanban
world maps, derived from the term nanbanjin 南蛮人 (‘southern barbarians’). This referred mainly to the Portuguese and
Spaniards, who reached Japan coming from the South.
See also Pegg 2014: 12.
The earliest full-colouring of provinces of Japan can be found
on the 1686 Honchō zukan kōmoku 本朝圖鑑綱目 (“Outline
map of our country”) and the 1691 Nihon kaizan chōrikuzu 日本
海山潮陸圖 (“Map of sea, mountain, tide and land of Japan”)
by Ishikawa Ryūsen 石川流宣. See https://open.library.ubc.ca
/collections/tokugawa/items/1.0167734 and https://open.library
.ubc.ca/collections/tokugawa/items/1.0213158.
See for example the late nineteenth century Guangdong quan
sheng shuilu yu tu 廣東全省水陸與圖 (“Map of the waterways
and roads in Guangdong Province”) at the Library of Congress:
https://www.loc.gov/item/gm71005159/ and the Zhili yu ditu ce
直隸輿地圖冊 (“Atlas of Zhili province”) made in 1859: https://
digitalatlas.asdc.sinica.edu.tw/map_detail.jsp?id=A103000008.
This statement is based on Diana Lange’s study of numerous
East Asian maps kept in store in the Museum am Rothenbaum
in Hamburg and on publications on collections of such maps
kept in different institutions worldwide (such as the British
Library, the Library of Congress, the Bibliothèque nationale de
France, the National Museum and National Library of Korea
and the Palace Museum in Beijing), see for example Han’guk
Kojidojip P’yŏnch’an Wiwŏnhoe 2012; Jang et al. 2018; Lin and
Zhang 2013; Wigen, Sugimoto and Karacas 2016; Xie and Chen
2018; Xie and Lin 2015. For a detailed account of the research
results see Lange and Hahn 2023.
136
Jang and Lange
Figure 10.2
2
Extract of the Daedongnyeojido, by Kim Jeong-ho, 1861.
© National Museum of Korea
Kim Jeong-ho and the Daedongnyeojido:
Key Data
In the eighteenth century, the governmental official
Shin Gyeong-jun 申景濬 (1712–1781), compiled the new
dynastic map Dongguk yeojido 東國輿地圖 (“Map of the
Eastern Country”).24 This standardized grid-based map
of the entire country filled with pertinent geographical
information paved the way for future large-scale maps,
such as the Daedongnyeojido made by Kim Jeong-ho (ca.
1804–ca. 1866). As the most eminent geographer and cartographer of the late Joseon period, Kim drew up a whole
series of important maps, of which the Daedongnyeojido
is regarded as his masterpiece.
The technique of printing maps from woodblocks
reached a high level of excellence in Korea and is well
documented for the Daedongnyeojido.25 It was printed
in 1861 and is the largest map of the entire Korean peninsula known. It is 6.7 metres high and 3.8 metres wide
and orientated to the north. It was made easy to carry and
to peruse compared to its size. Dividing the Korean peninsula into 22 layers at 120 ri (about 48 km) intervals on
the south-north axis and 80 ri (about 32 km) intervals on
the east west axis, Kim Jeong-ho made each layer into a
24
25
Oh 2015: 263.
National Museum of Korea 2007.
folding album. In doing so, he had resolved the shortcomings of large maps.
Around fifty prints were made from the woodblocks
in 1861, a second revised version of the woodblocks was
produced – the “1864 (gabja year in the sexagenary cycle)
edition” – including the corrections of errors in the first
“1861 (sinyu year in the sexagenary cycle) edition”.26
Like on many Korean maps, the mountain ranges are
strongly visualized on the Daedongnyeojido. Starting from
the detailed representation of Mount Paektu on the border between today’s North Korea and China, they run in
uninterrupted chains through the entire length of the
country. They are depicted largely in stereotypical form,
important mountains being larger.
Also, like on many other Korean maps, administrative,
military and cultural information on the maps is conveyed
through a combination of signs and colours. Altogether
Kim used twenty different signs to designate places. A speciality of the Daedongnyeojido is that a legend or jidopyo
explaining all the signs utilized on the map are appended
to the map. They represented military commands, district
seats (name in circle), walls/moats, military stations, post
stations, granaries, pasturages, signal fires, royal tombs,
small settlements, former district seats, former military
stations, former mountain fortresses, and roads (with ticks
26
Jang 2008: 269.
137
Colours and Readability in the Daedongnyeojido
Figure 10.3
Jidopyo (legend) explaining the twenty signs used on Daedongnyeojido (From the collection of the Sungshin Women’s
University Museum).
© Sang-hoon Jang
to indicate 10 ri intervals). In terms of military information, he even marked former military stations and mountain fortresses which were no longer in use. The efficient
use of map space enabled Kim to enter over 13,000 geographical designations on the map and much increased
the readability of the map.
3
The Colouring of the Daedongnyeojido
Next to the use of different signs, the utilization of colours on the map was another essential tool to increase
its readability. As shown in the two thirds of the printed
Daedongnyeojido that have survived to the present, Kim
obviously made it a rule to apply colours to the woodblock prints. However, it is not recorded who carried out
the colouring in which the three primary colours in painting – yellow, red and blue – were applied on the signs,
while blue was applied on the sea, rivers and lakes. In the
early stage of publishing the Daedongnyeojido, he applied
green even on the mountain ranges as shown in a copy
of the Daedongnyeojido which is housed at the Sungshin
Women’s University Museum (Figure 10.3). Before long, he
gave up applying colour on the mountain ranges, because
readers could easily recognize the mountain ranges
without the colouring. Instead, he persisted in colouring
the signs.
The colouring of the signs became an important and
persistent issue in publishing the Daedongnyeojido.
For the production of the Cheonggudo 靑邱圖 (“Map
of the Blue Hill”)27 in 1834, Kim’s first large-scale handdrawn national map, he already used colours and signs
to convey information – an experience he used later for
27
See https://library.korea.ac.kr/oldmap/?id=465014269&num=0
0000015&mode=list.
138
Jang and Lange
making the Daedongnyeojido. Interestingly, each copy of
the Daedongnyeojido shows some variations in the colour scheme used for colouring the signs. In spite of the
variations in the combination of colours on signs, there
is a certain tendency in deciding which colour would be
applied on each sign. As mentioned above, from the early
stage of the colouring, yellow, red and blue were the main
colours in the colouring of the Daedongnyeojido. Yellow
was applied on district seats, post stations, pasturages and
border lines between districts, while red was applied on
military commands and posts, royal tombs, signal fires,
and sometimes roads. Unlike yellow and red, blue was
selectively applied on the signs in some copies of the
Daedongnyeojido. In this case, blue was mainly applied
with the combination of red on military commands and
posts (see Figures 10.4 and 10.5).
A drastic change in the colouring of the map is seen
on three copies which were thought to be published
from 1863 to 1864, when Kim almost finished correcting
all the errors which he could find on the maps. These
errors included typos and wrong locations and omission of place names, border lines and signs. When he
thought that he completed the correction, he changed
the name of the edition of the Daedongnyeojido28 from the
“1861 sinyu edition” to the “1864 gabja edition”. Thus, the
three copies of the Daedongnyeojido that show a totally
new colouring system were published right before the
appearance of the new 1864 edition.29 In contrast to the
early Daedongnyeojido versions, where the land was left
uncoloured, a full-colouring of each county was applied
on these maps (see Figure 10.6). However, the copies of
the later gabja edition of the Daedongnyeojido did not
adopt this colouring system any more.
Similarly to the printed Daedongnyeojido, the colouring of the manuscript versions shows variations in the
applied colour scheme and system. For most of the surviving maps, the system of full-colouring the water and leaving the land uncoloured was adopted. However, there also
exist late nineteenth century copies where the full-colouring of land was applied, such as the map kept in the
Research Institute for Korean Studies.30 As on the printed
28
29
30
1861 = sinyu year, 1864 = gabja year in the sexagenary cycle – a
cycle of sixty years that was historically used for recording time
in East Asia.
Jang 2008: 269. The three maps are kept in the Hwabong
Museum in Seoul, in the Wisconsin-Milwaukee University (AGS
Library) and in the Harvard University Yenching Library. They
were also published in Han’guk Kojidojip P’yŏnch’an Wiwŏnhoe
2012: 353–55.
This map was published in Han’guk Kojidojip P’yŏnch’an
Wiwŏnhoe 2012: 357.
versions of the Daedongnyeojido, the signs on the manuscript maps were also coloured.
4
The Colourants on the Daedongnyeojido:
Two Case Studies from Hamburg
The collection of East Asian maps at the Museum am
Rothenbaum, founded in 1871, comprises maps from the
regions of China, Japan and Korea from the sixteenth
to the twentieth century. A large part of the Korean
and Japanese maps is from the Hamburg geologist Carl
Christian Gottsche (1855–1909), who acquired the maps
at the end of the nineteenth century when he was helping
to set up a geological institute at the Imperial University
of Japan and was carrying out prospecting work for the
Korean King Kojong. He annotated many maps by hand
with remarks concerning the contents, the place where
the map was published and bought and the price he paid
for it. Amongst these maps was a hand-coloured woodblock print of the Daedongnyeojido. Gottsche wrote that
he was handed over the map when he left Korea by the
previous owner Paul Georg von Möllendorff.31 On a handwritten note added to the woodblock printed version of
the Daedongnyeojido, Gottsche stated that fifty prints
were made of this map and that the printing blocks were
destroyed when French troops began a campaign against
Korea.32
Later, manuscript copies were made based on the
woodblock printed maps. The Museum am Rothenbaum
also keeps one of these manuscript versions from the
Korean collection compiled by H.C. Eduard Meyer – one
of the founding members of the trading company Meyer
& Co., which was active in Asia, and later Imperial Korean
consul in Hamburg.33
Both map sets were coloured according to the typical
Korean colouring system: water being coloured entirely in
blue and land masses left uncoloured, whereby the sea was
only coloured where it met the coast. Besides this, both
versions were coloured individually and thus greatly differ
in their appearance. Like on all Daedongnyeojido copies,
the information on the maps is conveyed through a combination of signs and colours. In the manuscript version,
names encircled with a red line are district capitals, double lines denote walled cities. In the printed version, the
interior of the circles is coloured yellow. Squares with red
31
32
33
See Gottsche 1886: 239.
However, Gottsche did not state where this information came
from. Thus further research should be undertaken on this issue.
See also Lange and van der Linde 2021: 25–26.
Colours and Readability in the Daedongnyeojido
Figure 10.4
From the collection of the Gyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies.
© Sang-hoon Jang
Figure 10.5
From the collection of the National Museum of Korea collection.
© Sang-hoon Jang
139
140
Figure 10.6
Jang and Lange
From the collection of the Hwabong Gallery.
© Sang-hoon Jang
perimeters show military garrisons, triangular red flame
signs are signalling beacons.
Both Daedongnyeojido sets contain maps with city maps
of Hanyang, today’s Seoul (Dosengdo 都城圖 ) and the surrounding area outside the city walls (Gyeongjo obudo 京兆
五部圖 ). Four colours were used in colouring the maps:
red, blue, yellow and green. The type of colouring varies
in several places. While the mountain ranges surrounding Seoul are consistently shown on the printed city map
in light green, several different shades of green are used
on the hand-drawn map. On the printed map of the environs of Seoul the mountain ranges, printed in black, were
then painted over in green, while on the hand-drawn map
they were consistently drawn in black ink. In the printed
map set, roads are depicted by red lines while on the
hand-drawn map both red and black lines denote roads.
Waterways are shown on both sets in blue, in particular
the Han River, which flows to the south of the city. The
royal capital is represented as a yellow area in the centre
of the map of the surroundings. As mentioned above, the
colour yellow was chosen for the centre with the capital,
in keeping with the traditional East Asian system of colours associated with the cardinal directions. The palace
precincts and important cultic sites on the city map of
Hanyang are similarly coloured yellow and given a red
outline. Both maps contain numerous captions, whereby
the administrative districts (bang 坊 ) on the printed map
are additionally shown as blue cartouches.
The different external appearance of both map sets can
also be explained by the different colourants that were
used. According to an analysis of the colourants undertaken in 2020, the Daedongnyeojido woodblock print was
coloured using red minium, a yellow organic pigment
(probably gamboge), blue indigo and a copper green pigment (since chlorine is present, it could be atacamite).
In the manuscript map, in contrast, red vermilion, yellow orpiment (with faint traces of vermilion), as well as
Prussian blue blended with white lead were identified.
Colours and Readability in the Daedongnyeojido
Figures 10.7 and 10.8
Doseongdo 都城圖 (“Map of the walled capital”) from the printed and the manuscript Daedongnyeojido.
© NRICH/Museum am Rothenbaum (MARKK), Hamburg, Inv. Nr. 12.24:138 and 33.215:16
141
142
Jang and Lange
The green coloured elements were coloured using a mixture of Prussian blue and an organic yellow colourant.
Prussian blue could be identified on six out of the eleven
eighteenth and nineteenth century Korean maps examined at the Museum am Rothenbaum.34 The synthetic
pigment Prussian blue was produced for the first time in
Europe in 1706 and quickly found its way to Asia. During
the nineteenth century Prussian blue replaced step by
step the colourants indigo and azurite that were used for
the blue elements on Korean maps before that period. The
pigment was most probably not imported directly from
Europa, but from China, where it has been produced since
the early nineteenth century.35 Even though the imported
colourant did not affect the content or the representation
of Korean maps, it affected the material composition of
their colours.
In summary, we can suppose that the use of different
colourants for the colouring of both map sets kept in the
Museum am Rothenbaum suggests that they may have
been coloured at different times or in different places.
5
Conclusion
When Kim Jeong-ho made the Daedongnyeojido he drew
up on a whole series of other maps made during a long
and fruitful cartographic tradition. In this context he
also built on an established practice of colouring maps.
Nevertheless, he also broke new ground, making him the
most eminent Korean geographer and cartographer of the
late Joseon period. The Daedongnyeojido is usually considered as the most significant work of Korean cartography
due to three reasons: its unusual size (nearly seven metres
long), its accuracy (almost GPS accurate) and its practicability of use (easy to fold and transport). There are further
reasons for this.
Like other mapmakers before him, Kim Jeong-ho utilized signs and colours in order to improve the readability
of the Daedongnyeojido. However, he was the first Korean
cartographer who provided a comprehensive legend for
all the (coloured) signs on his map.36 Furthermore, he was
34
35
36
Daedongnyeojido 大東輿地圖 , after 1861 (MARKK 33.215:16);
Dori-pyo 道里標 , 1820s (MARKK 12.24:39); Jeolla-do 全羅道,
early eighteenth century (MARKK xx SOAS 718); Yeojido 輿地圖 ,
ca. 1880 (MARKK 12.24:50); Cheonhado 天下圖 , late nineteenth
century (MARKK 12.24:46); Cheonsang Yeolchabunyajido 天象列
次分野之圖 , nineteenth century (MARKK 76.28:17).
See also the paper on the Blue maps of China by Elke Papelitzky
and Richard Pegg in this volume.
The cartographer Yun Duseo (1668–1715) provided a very brief
legend for his Donguk yeojido 東國輿地之圖 made in the 1710
(see Jang et al. 2018: 33).
the first Korean mapmaker who applied a full-colouring of
land to distinguish administrative units – this for the first
time for the production of his Cheonggudo in ca. 183437
and later for some copies of the Daedongnyeojido. Colour
legends spread increasingly from the early eighteenth century onwards in Europe, where the full-colouring of land
to distinguish political units was also a common practice.
Although there is no evidence for it, it might be possible
that he saw Chinese or Japanese maps which were influenced by the colouring and use of legends of European
cartography. Taking into account that the full-colouring of
land areas was only applied on three copies, this colour
system obviously had no lasting influence at this point in
time.
In view of the various colouring of each copy of
Daedongnyeojido, Kim does not seem to have provided
any fixed instructions for the colourists of the maps. As
mentioned above, we do not know if he coloured all the
printed maps himself or if other people were involved
in the colouring process. On the one hand the colouring
might have been conducted at the request of the map
users, although it is not very likely that each user himself
participated in specifying a certain combination of colours. However, we cannot exclude the colouring being
done by the map users in individual cases.
There are many legends surrounding the death of Kim
Jeong-ho, who disappeared around 1866, at the same time
as most of the printing blocks were destroyed. As a cartographer he was on the one hand strongly connected to the
existing traditions, but also open to new developments
and influences. For these reasons he broke new ground by
making the Daedongnyeojido.
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