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  • Korea: A Cartographic History by John Rennie Short
  • Gwilym Eades
Korea: A Cartographic History / John Rennie Short. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. Pp. 160; illus. (71 col. plates); 7 × 10". ISBN 9780226753645 (cloth), US$45.00. ISBN 9780226753669 (ebook). Available from: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/

In Korea: A Cartographic History, "Globalization of Space" and "Cartroversies" succinctly bookend a comprehensive and highly interesting examination of Korea through maps. We are given a short tour of some ways in which Korea failed to make the representational cut initially - for instance, with Ptolemy - but gradually we come to see traces of Korea appearing as global space solidifies.

Throughout the book, evidence is brought to bear in the form of maps, bolstered by precise and incisive, yet brief, [End Page 73] forays into history wherever it may be relevant and applicable to the book's primary goal: an illumination of how Korea sees itself, and how others see Korea, through maps. Orientalism plays a part here, as East and West on the one hand, or colonizer and colonized on the other, inscribe each other on maps in ways that say more about the inscriber than they do about the subject of the inscription (Korea).

"Cartroversies" examines a post-colonial condition exemplified in the naming of the bodies of water that lie between North and South Korea and their neighbours on either side, noting that South Korea is winning a "battle of the names," as it rightly should, through an advertising campaign in such high-profile venues as the New York Times and the Washington Post (p. 146).

The two 'bookends' neatly enfold six core chapters that trace an evolution of cartographic Korea starting with the long and increasingly hermetic reign of the Joseon dynasty. This initial internal view very nicely historicizes and contextualizes by showing the increasing sophistication of Korean mapping from the early centuries of the second millennium AD, when maps resembled bodies with spines, veins, and blocky labels, through the time of the most illustrious of Korean leaders, King Sejong.

As Short notes, Sejong invented the Korean alphabet and is pictured on some (i.e., South) Korean currencies. Alongside ever-evolving Gangnido "shapes and forces" maps are overlapping and not entirely distinct national mapping efforts influenced by a Korea increasingly sensitive to its territorial identity. A frontier north of present-day Pyongyang pushed farther north, and much time and effort were accordingly devoted to mapping that frontier/ borderland. This foreshadows final chapters in which an ever more sensitive and inscribed (on the ground) border between the two halves of Korea is reflected, ironically, in a cartographic imperative not to highlight the presence of that ever-present scar that cuts the peninsula in half.

Coverage of the Joseon dynasty continues through at least half the book, tracing reasons for, and cartographic reflections of, Korea's inward focus, isolation, and eventual colonization by both China and Japan in succession. Methodologically innovative, Short examines how Korea sees itself within a global context, focusing on a national-scale perspective, and then switches things around so that we are looking from the outside in, examining how Korea looks, cartographically, from the outside perspectives of other countries and peoples.

Emphasis remains, as it should, upon representational issues. Postmodernism and post-colonialism are mentioned, but these very brief terminological dalliances feel like asides. It is understandable that these words crop up: any "deconstruction" of maps that, in other words, attempts to pull apart the layers of assumption and meaning that constitute the power of the map must of course deal either indirectly or directly with the revolution in map deconstruction begun by J.B. Harley. Short dutifully nods in Harley's direction, paying his respects, and moves on very quickly.

The post-colonial perspective is necessary, especially near the end of the book, in the discussion of Korea's colonization by Japan, but what seems to be forgotten when this word is used uncritically is that it represents a fairly extreme position. By this I do not mean that merely uttering the word post-colonial makes one a dangerous radical. This is clearly not the case with Short, who demonstrates the serious scholarly nature of...

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