Pars Coray: The Circulation of Geographical Knowledge on Korea in Early Modern Europe

While travellers, merchants and missionaries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries continuously enriched the European epistemic framework with ethnographic knowledge about China and Japan, Korea remained an exception. The inaccessibility of the peninsula led Europeans to perceive it as an obscure and uncharted land, in stark contrast to its neighbouring countries. This situation changed to some extent, first with the outbreak of the Imjin War (1592–8), which – beyond being a pivotal event in East Asian history – also served as a catalyst for European knowledge by bringing Korea to the attention of the Western world; and second, with the development of the Catholic mission in Ming China, which, drawing on knowledge accumulated from native sources, enabled missionaries to contribute to a more precise spatial placement of the peninsula. Nevertheless, the geographical and cultural information that circulated among European learned circles remained fragmented, vague and inconsistent. This study explores the mechanisms of knowledge transmission, the discrepancies between textual and cartographic sources, and the role of Jesuit missionary networks in shaping European perceptions of Korea. By analysing key textual and cartographic sources – from missionary writings to commercial atlases – this research highlights the epistemic challenges and asymmetries that defined early modern European understandings of the Korean peninsula.