1899 Korean Map: "Daehanjeondo" (大韓全圖)

The Korean map below was included in the 1899 edition of the "Daehanjiji (大韓地誌), which was a Korean geography book written by Hyeon Chae (玄采). The book was published in two volumes, of which the cover of the first volume is pictured on the left. The book is comprised of thirteen chapters, excluding the introduction. The thirteen chapters describe the geography, history, economy, and other features of the thirteen provinces that made up Korea at the time. A Map of each province was also included in each chapter. The forward (序) of the book was written by Lee Gyu-hwan (李圭桓), who was the director of the editorial office for Korea's Ministry of Education (學部) at the time. The Korean map below was placed in the front of the book, before the introduction. The map is called the "Daehan Jeondo" (大韓全圖), which means "Complete Map of Korea."

If you look at Ulleungdo (鬱陵島) on the map, you will notice a small neighboring island off its east shore labeled as "于山" (Usan). Korean historians claim that Usando (于山島) was the old Korean name for "Dokdo" (Liancourt Rocks), but the map below shows that "Usan" was just a neighboring island of Ulleungdo. The lines of longitude on the map show Ulleungdo and its neighboring island of Usan to be between the 130 (三十) and 131 degree lines of east longitude. That would exclude the island labeled as "Usan" on the map from being Liancourt Rocks (Dokdo) since Liancourt Rocks is located east of the 131 degree longitude line at 131 degrees 52 minutes. There are sixty minutes in a degree of longitude, which means that Liancourt Rocks are located very close to the 132 degree line.



The following is a map from the chapter on Gangwon Province from the 1901 edition of the "Daehanjiji (大韓地誌). Ulleungdo (鬱陵島) appears on the map because it was considered a part of Gangwon Province in 1901. If you look at Ulleungdo on the map, you should notice that this map also shows "于山" (Usan) as a neighboring island of Ulleungdo, not as Liancourt Rocks (Dokdo). In fact, Usando (于山島) was never shown as Liancourt Rocks (Dokdo) on any map, Korean or Japanese.