Kim Su‐Hong and the Korean cartographic tradition

Abstract

The important map of China, compiled in i666 by Kim Su-Hong, appears to be extant only in three copies. One is in the Christian Museum in Seoul and has been briefly described in Korean by Kim Yang-Son, (fig i) and two are in the private collection of the present writer. Of Kim Su-Hong (i6oi-8i ) only a little is known and this comes from the Sukchong Sillok (Veritable Records of the Yi Dynasty) .2 He was born in Andong (Kyongsang Province of Korea) and became an influential secretary (Sung-ji) at the court. Later he was Director of the Office of Ton-ryong-bu. In the controversy over the use of the reign-period of K'ang-Hsi (of the Ch'ing Dynasty of China) instead of persisting with that of Ch'ung-Chen, the last of the Ming Dynasty, in terms of which the clash between progressives and reactionaries was played out at the Korean Court, Kim Su-Hong took the side which acknowledged change. An alternative biography, giving dates of i6i9-78 and stating that Kim visited Peking and brought back materials about Western science, could not be verified, nor could titles of reported books on astronomy be located anywhere. Of the two copies of the map available for study one is coloured and the second is a plain copy written probably by the same hand but more rapidly. The plain copy is titled as from The Flowery Studio and is dated in the title as i64I + n.6o [hsin ssu], but the date at the end of the introduction is i666 + n.6o [ping wu] as given in the coloured copy. The coloured copy is titled as coming from the Rural retreat and is dated in both places as i 666 [ping wu]. Kim Yang-Son's copy also bears this date. Comparison with the biography leads us to select i 666 as the operative date of compilation. The date could not be earlier, because of references to Matteo Ricci. There are very minor textual differences between the copies but these do not clearly define a copying sequence. Jeon Sang-Woon, in his history of science and technology in Korea, mentions the map, giving the date as i666,3 but quoting from Kim Yang-Son. The maps themselves are handwritten on paper (84 cm. wide by I32 cm. high) and the texts of the long preface in the writer's copies agrees almost exactly with that published by Kim YangSon. Other information for comparison is not available. The text and its translation follow this paper as an appendix. The title of the map is Comprehensive Map of the Ancient and Modern World. In fact, the region covered is only that of China with annotations as to the existence of neighbouring territories such as Japan, India and Indonesia. The map itself is filled with geographical, historical and biographical annotations relating to all periods from the legendary Chinese dynasties to Matteo Ricci and is a kind of repository locating geographically the information which an educated Korean familiar with the Chinese classics would have. The map is prefaced by a list of distances from Peking and Nanking quoted from the Ta Ming I T'ung Chi (about I450) and also by a list of distances from Loyang and Ch'ang An quoted from the T'ung Tien of T'u Yu (about 8I2). Very many other distances are specified on the map and mostly refer to distances between provincial capitals. Kim Su-Hong's map is clearly retrograde, Chinese maps of that time and Matteo Ricci's maps (I584 and i602) both being technically far better. The style is of the Ming period with archaic features being similar to the earliest Chinese printed maps and to the map of China in the encyclopedia San Ts'ai T'u Hui ( I609) .4 Comparing Kim's map with the Ti Li Chih T'u (I I 55) reproduced by Needham (vol. III, p. 549), which he says is the oldest printed map in any culture, we see that the style and conventional signs are almost unchanged. On the same page Needham quotes a passage from Shen Kua (ft. eleventh century) on the eagerness with which Korean envoys acquired strategic maps and how they should be denied further information.