Westerners’ Perceptions of Baekdusan until the Nineteenth Century : Focusing on Materials in English

Baekdusan(or Changbaishan in China) was the only land border between Joseon and Qing. During the late nineteenth century, Westerners were more interested in traveling Manchuria and the Korean peninsula than before, in many cases, for the sake of finding benefits for their countries in this area. While they were traveling this region, they recognized the significance of Baekdusan. They gained information of the mountainfrom both East Asian and Western references. Even if they were usually attracted by natural resources, potential industry and labor power of the area, Baekdusan was exceptional in that they just tried to understand its geographical characteristics, historical meaning, and contemporary lives of the local people.After they confirmed the geographical characteristics of the mountain, they were mainly interested in the cultural history inherent to the mountain and virtual lives of the people in that area.It was in the late nineteenth century when Baekdusan finally revealed its genuine identity relating both sacredness and mundanity to the West. And this mountain was almost the final region of East Asia which Westerners explored. Especially, the worksof Baekdusan written by James, Campbell, and Cavendish belong to few travel records which closely approached the mountain's entity in the late nineteenth century. KCI Citation Count: 1