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영어

This essay attempts to examine urban semiotics approaches with several territorial maps and various traditional paintings in the late Chosun period, especially in the area of ‘Hanyang,’ the old name for the capital, Seoul. Maps in late Choson period basically functioned as geographical objects, but it had various functions as political visions and created socioeconomic purposes. Thus it needs to focus on the reading of the map and study not only urban space, but also people, traffic, commercial business. Real-scenery landscape paintings, painted in the same period, is of great significance in highlighting how members of noble family commissioned a politically motivated painting and used it as a means of representing their political outlooks. These paintings have been interpreted to reflect various topographical meanings based on real cityscape, but sometimes these paintings were celebrated by many members of the high class society and came to be viewed as a visual representation of their political visions. In this essay, I have proposed some new way to understand urban semiotics of Hanyang. It cannot be understood completely without considering its complex urban semiotics context. Reading maps and paintings is specifically concerned to give an analysis of the semiotic structure of particular city, to deepen the analysis of the corresponding spatial structure. This leads us to rethink why and how the specific area of landscape images was created. Visual culture studies for approach to the city will be of great help in reaching a comprehensive understanding of how true-view landscape images were made and used as urban semiotics objects. As a result, it is emphasized that urban semiotics could contribute to a new and better understanding of Hanyang by way of frequent interchange with other disciplines such as sociology, economics and art history as well as maps and paintings of the stylistic approaches.