Making Topographic Maps of Korea during Imperial Reign and Japanese Colonial Rule
구한말과 일제강점기의 한반도 지도제작
본 연구는 한반도를 둘러싼 동아시아의 격동기였던 구한말부터 일제강점기에 이르는 19~20세기 초엽의 한반도 지도제작과정을 규명한 것이며, 한국지도발달사 중 고지도와 현대지도의 고리를 잇는 작업으로 자리매김할 수 있다. 일제는 1884년부터 한반도에 육군참모본부 간첩대를 파견하여 지도를 제작하기 시작하였고, 국가기본도인 1:5만 축척의 지형도는 3차에 걸쳐 간행되었다. 제1차 지형도는 간첩대를 파견하여 비밀측량과 같은 주권국가에 대한 불법행위를 무릅쓰고 간행된 것이며, 제2차 지형도는 기존의 제1차 지형도를 삼각측량에 의해 개측하거나 새롭게 측량한 것이고, 제3차 지형도는 식민지정책인 토지조사사업의 일환으로 간행된 지도이다.
This essay tries to clarify the episode with respect to the geopolitical project of making topographic maps of Korea in the late 19th and the early 20th centuries which have been characterized as a volatile period in East Asia as a whole. Korea in particular lied in the center of colonial ambition of various imperial powers at that time. The reconstructing of this critical phase of Korean cartographic history is to shed light on how the transition of map-making paradigm from traditional style to the modern one has been achieved. Literary and cartographical evidence shows that Imperial Japan started to dispatch intelligence agents-cum-engineers in 1884 in order to map out detailed shape of Korea. Their efforts ended up with three versions of base maps of Korea drawn at the scale of 1 to 50,000. The first edition of the topographic maps came to the light in the midst of an outright violation of sovereignty by the secret service technicians who carried out the confidential survey works. The second edition was an update revision of the original adjusted with information from triangular surveying and subsequent new additional surveys. The final version of the map series was published as a result of the nation-wide land survey decreed by the Japanese Government-General of Josen for the sole purpose of uprooting the economic basis of the colonized people.