Cool Korean Maps

(Source)

History or art? Most people would probably say the former, but then the mountain ranges and valleys in the map above have little relation to reality. Still, I think it’s an…ahem…simply beautiful piece of work myself, but unfortunately don’t know where it’s from. Can any museum-visiting readers help out?

As you can probably guess, I’m quite a fan of maps (I’m not alone!), and have about 20 or so just of various parts of Korea. I used to have two laminated, detailed maps of my local area hanging up in my kitchen, but I took them down once I discovered a nice, secluded park 10 minutes from my apartment, which the maps had deprived me of visiting for three years because the park isn’t on either (places to get some quiet and seclusion are very rare and precious here!). In their place, I’ve been combining my interest in Korea, history in general, geography and near-future science-fiction by looking at maps of how what Northeast Asia will look like in the near future as the sea-level rises, what it looked like 20,000, 19,000, 18,000…(and so on) years ago, and how the whole world will look like with a 100m sea-level rise. And don’t get me started on the supercontinent of Pangaea Ultima due to appear in 250-400 million years time!

(Update: A big thanks to Jer, who tells me where he got the original shot from here)

(Update 2: I’ve found some more Korean map lovers! Amanda of the blog Amanda Takes Off discusses a recent exhibition of maps in the National Museum of Korea here, and Philip Gowman of London Korean Links mentions an exhibition of antique Korean maps at the Korean Cultural Centre UK here)

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