Ulleungdo Inspector Bak Chang-seok's (朴昌錫) 1711 Inscription

Below are two photos. One is a photo of a stone craved with an old inscription commemorating the 1711 inspection of Ulleungdo by Samcheok Commander Bak Chang-seok (朴昌錫). The other photo shows what could be considered a rubbing of the inscription. (Click on the photos to enlarge.)


The inscription reads as follows:

辛卯五月初九日到泊于
倭舡倉以爲日後憑考次
萬里凔溟外將軍駕彩舟
平生仗忠信履險自無憂
搜討官折衡將軍三陟營將
兼僉節制使朴錫昌拙句刻
石于卯方軍官折衝朴省三
折衝金壽元
倭學閑良朴命逸
軍官閑良金元聲
都沙工崔紛
江陵通引金(燮?)
營吏金(?)興
軍色金孝良
中房朴一貫
及唱金時云
庫直金危玄
食母金世長
奴子金禮發
使令金乙奉

I did not translate it because I am not good or confident enough, but it just seems to be saying when and where they craved the stone, and then gives the names and titles of those people in their survey group. I found the photos on the Takeshima Research Center site HERE, so the site may have a translation somewhere.

Bak Chang-seok is an important figure in the Takeshima/Dokdo debate because the map he made of Ulleungdo during his 1711 inspection shows Usando as Ulleungdo's neighboring island of Jukdo. Though many other Korean maps have also shown Usando to be almost certainly Ulleungdo's neighboring island of Jukdo, Koreans have often claimed that the Usando on the maps was just "Dokdo" (Liancourt Rocks) drawn near Ulleungdo for convenience sake. In fact, that is what Steve Barber (Toadface) used to say, though he has not said it recently. :) What makes Bak's map different is that it not only labeled the island as "the so-called Usando" (所謂于山島), but it also labeled it with the words "field(s) of haejang bamboo" (海長竹田). Haejang bamboo is a particular kind of bamboo that can grow up to seven meters tall, which means that Koreans cannot claim, with a straight face, that the Usando on this map was "Dokdo" (Liancourt Rocks) since Dokdo is just barren rocks without the soil needed to grow bamboo.

Fortunately, Koreans, including the Director of the Dokdo Museum, have recently started to admit that the Usando on this map and others was Ulleungdo's neighboring island of Jukdo. Instead, they now claim that the maps were drawn in error and people should focus instead on the the words of former boat oarsman An Yong-bok, who said that Japan's Matsushima was Usando. In other words, Koreans want you to ignore the maps drawn by their Ulleungdo inspectors, who were high-ranking officials, and focus, instead, only on the words of a man who was an admitted liar and criminal, which does not seem to bother many Koreans. They also do not seem to be bothered by the fact that An Yong-bok said that Matsushima (Liancourt Rocks) was farther from Ulleungdo than the Korean coast, which is not true, and that Matsushima was much bigger than Ulleungdo, which is also not true. In fact, there are many things in An Yong-bok's testimony that do not add up, but that does not seem to bother Koreans because An Yong-bok is their last great hope, considering that they have no maps and little or no documents to support their claim for "Liancourt Rocks."

The following is the 1711 map drawn by Pak Chang-seok during his inspection of Ulleungdo. I have also posted a cutout of the Usando portion of the map. By the way, notice the three prominent peaks in the center of the map, which is a clue that another name for this island was "Sambongdo" (Three Peak Island). Koreans claim that "Sambongdo" was another name for "Dokdo," even though there are no maps or documents to support that claim. There are documents, however, that tell us that "Sambongdo" was another name for Ulleungdo.