The Koreans are to be noted among nations for the possession of two very different vehicles for the expression of thought, which they put to nearly parallel uses for general needs of communication: a simple and very perfect alphabet, and a complex system of hieroglyphics. The alphabet they owe to the Buddhist priests, missionaries, who took the idea of letters from their sacred books, and developed the Korean symbols for the writing of tracts and prayers; the hieroglyphics came from the mother country and civilizer, China.
The needs of a simpler mode of writing for the intelligent, non-literary classes of Japan, had led in that country to a similar development; but there progress stopped at a syllabary, and the alphabetic stage was not reached.
Until within the past few years the development of accurate maps and charts of Korea has been retarded, partly from a lack of reliable information concerning Korean proper names, and partly from the absence of systematic surveys of the coast. Very recently, however, the difficulties of map making have been considerably lessened through the efforts of students of the Korean language, who have developed exact systems of transliteration, by the application of which the sounds of Korean proper names may be correctly expressed in our own letters. At the present day it would seem possible, therefore, to fix, by common consent, upon a general, systematic orthography for Korean proper names, to be used upon the charts prepared by all those nations employing Roman letters; and this without serious danger of clashing with previously developed national systems, or having to undo much work done by others.
The system of transliteration developed by Mr. E. M. Satow, of the British Diplomatic Service, which has been put to practical use by that gentleman in his work entitled "List of Korean Geographical Names," would seem well adapted to meet future needs. It gives a simple series of equivalents for Korean sounds, and is remarkably free from diacritical marks. Mr. Satow's system has recently been employed by English and German authors, while efforts to extend its application would seem to have met thus far with no opposition.
The French system of transliteration, which antedates the one above referred to, was developed by the French Roman Catholic Missionaries in Korea, and has been employed by them in their admirable works the "Grammaire Coréenne" and the "Dictionnaire Coréen," by far the most important yet prepared upon the language, and the first given to the outer world. The missionaries aimed at reproducing native speech, and to this end faithfully copied symbols representing shades of sound that are not to be appreciated by the foreign ear, and which in fact are often neglected in conversation by the Koreans of the present day—for the Ön-mun, or native alphabet, has long since lost its purely phonetic character. The simplicity of the French system is marred, therefore, by the use of a multiplicity of letters, which, appearing in the form of aggregations of consonants or of vowels, are more apt to mislead than to guide.
Inasmuch as the proper names upon native maps, which are invariably written in the Chinese, may be correctly rendered into English, whereas attempts at the systematic transliteration of Chinese characters have generally failed, it may be well to allude to the points of difference in the two cases. The possibility of the transliteration of Korean depends upon the following: (1) that the Korean pronunciation of Chinese characters is independent of the pitch of the voice or tone; (2) that the native alphabet is especially constructed with a view to the easy reproduction of the Korean pronunciation of the same; (3) that the Korean pronunciation of these characters is quite uniform throughout the whole extent of the country; (4) that the Korean equivalents may be readily transliterated into English. All that is necessary, therefore, in fixing a geographic name is to have it written correctly in Chinese and in the Ön-mun. From the latter the English equivalent may be readily obtained. The need of the Chinese form arises from the fact that but few of the natives spell correctly, while many of them write Chinese well; so that it becomes necessary to refer both writings to some authority, by whom the native spelling may be verified.
Wide spread as is the use of the Chinese nomenclature, it is none the less evident that the system is an artificial one, and that its employment must end somewhere. In those parts of the country that are the least explored, and where educational facilities are wanting, in the mountain fastnesses of the north, and among the many islands of the Yellow Sea, important geographic names occur that possess no Chinese equivalents: native words capable of being written only in the Ön-mun and which derive their origin from local peculiarities. To ascertain these correctly the services of an educated Korean are required; and it may be added here that no surveying party on the Korean coast should be without the services of a native guide, capable of speaking a few words of English. Such a man may be picked up at an open port. He would be useful in many ways: in preventing the destruction of signals from superstitious motives by the natives; in ascertaining from fishermen the existence of dangers in the intricate coast waters; in marking the position of towns and villages not to be seen from their sea approaches; and in securing supplies of fresh provisions.
The preliminary study of the geography of an eastern country necessitates the comparative examination of data gathered from widely different sources: the early partial surveys of the coasts by mariners, and the rough maps made by the natives themselves. Inasmuch as large sections of the Korean coasts are as yet hardly examined, and since it is only within the last few years that foreigners have been allowed to penetrate into the interior, it follows that no accurate map of the land exists. In selecting bases for future developments it becomes necessary, therefore, to examine the various approximate representations, and to determine which of them is best adapted to aid the work in hand.
Many writers upon Korea seem prone to attribute the mapping of the country to the result of explorations and observations made by foreigners. I believe this assumption to be erroneous and think it can be readily proven that, although the Koreans may have known practically nothing of the outside world up to the time of the treaties, some twenty years ago, they had, nevertheless, long before this formed an excellent idea of the configuration of their own country. The first important work accomplished by outsiders was the survey of the common boundary of Korea and China by the Jesuits, acting under the orders of the Chinese Emperor Kang-hsi, in the year 1709. Severity of climate and roughness of country prevented the party from making more than a preliminary examination of the districts that they passed through, but a few fair determinations of latitude and approximations to longitude were obtained, and the general direction of the boundary determined. With the aid of these data, supplemented by information from native sources, a map was constructed, in which the Korean peninsula was connected with the general system of the world's coördinates and proper names were given in our own alphabetic characters. This map, which forms the basis of most of the representations of Korea in use at the present day, shows its origin in the transliteration of proper names in accordance with the Mandarin Chinese and not the Korean pronunciation of the Chinese characters employed to represent them.
The information from Korean sources which the missionaries must have utilized in completing their work was doubtless attained by them in the form of native maps. Of these there are several good ones in use at the present day, two of which would seem especially worthy of notice: (1) the large map of twenty sheets dividing the peninsula into sections by parallel lines drawn from east to west, and (2) a map giving the country in eight sheets, by provinces. The key to the latter, showing the entire kingdom, as well as one of the expanded sheets showing the Kyöngsang province in the southeast, and the Nakdong river, the most important stream of the land, are appended to this paper, and will serve to indicate the progress independently attained by the Koreans in the art of map making. These plates have been reproduced from a copy of an original now in the possession of Mgr. J. G. Blanc, the French Missionary Bishop of Korea, to whom it served as an accurate guide at the time of his perilous entry into the country, fifteen years ago, during a period of severe persecutions.