I should start with a disclaimer, that I'm not a historian, demographer, or Korean. I'd like to consider myself well informed on Korean history, and research for this has basically consumed my life for the past few days- but needless to say, there are almost certainly parts that can be improved. If anyone has suggestions, I'd love to hear them. I hope I got this out in time for there to still a chance for Korea to get some changes in the expansion.
This post is extremely long, so I'm just gonna lead with a quick overview of the major suggested changes for those that don't want to read on:
the gradient in the middle map shows development
Essentially, between 4 and 6 new provinces plus a couple of adjusted borders, redistribution of the development, and an entirely different terrain and trade good setup.
So, why the changes? I'm hoping the terrain at least will be uncontroversial; the Korean peninsula is notoriously mountainous (roughly 70% of the peninsula is mountains), whereas in EU4 it's portrayed as flat. The trade goods in 1.19 have most of the grain in the north and the fish in the south, which is backwards- the overwhelming majority of the farmland is in the south, where the climate is hotter and wetter. Likewise for development; in EU4, Gangwon and Hamgyeong are given some of the most on the peninsula, where historically they were the least populated by far.
As for the extra provinces, I'll go into more detail below, but I believe Korea warrants a few more. I've always been a bit shaky on what criteria are used to qualify new provinces being added- and it's true that administratively, the setup already portrays Korea's borders pretty well. But this was a densely populated and centralized country, and comparing it to other regions in the game, Korea falls well below the average population per province.
Development distribution
I've written down some more detailed numbers on a spreadsheet here.
Here's a comparison between the in game setup of development, and the population distribution according to Joseon registers in percent per province. Now, Joseon censuses and such were notoriously unreliable for a variety of reasons I'll talk about in a bit, but for a proportional spread instead of absolute numbers, they should give an indication.
Several provinces remain practically unchanged, but Gangwon and Hamgyeong- the topright most two provinces- empty out almost entirely. Gangwon is extremely mountainous, and Hamgyeong was a new frontier at this time, and neither were good for agriculture. Even today they're relatively unpopulated relative to the rest of the country, and that was doubly true historically.
The other big change is that the southernmost provinces are a much larger proportion of the country. Insanely so, in fact- at times, more than two thirds of Korea's population were in Gyeongsang, Chungcheong and Jeolla (the bottom 3 mainland provinces)- they're the part of the peninsula most suited towards the far more bountiful wet rice cultivation, so their populations exploded as that made inroads in Early Joseon. This population disparity would level out over time though, and was for most of the game's period, so I used the more even later numbers for the distribution.
Naturally there is a lot of latitude to these numbers if you want to make tweaks, and I'm just suggesting percentages rather than actual numbers, since I realize development levels are often for balance and so on. Here's my proposed distribution down to a finer level than the 8 provinces (the 1's will have to be 3 dev I guess):
Terrain
here are two (one and two) good topographical maps for reference. keep in mind the height scales are different.
I'm not totally sure what qualifies a province to have what terrain, but I gave it my best shot. This is one of the most glaring issues in 1.19- Korea is 70% mountains, and while they're not especially high, they're higher than the ones represented as mountains in southern Manchuria, wheras Korea is entirely flat. Mountains had a huge impact on Korean culture and military policies. Maybe some more provinces (the north part of Gyeongsang in the south, for instance) should be mountains too, but at the very least the northeast and Gangwon should definitely be.
Separating some regions into grasslands I'm less sure about, but I think it makes sense. A case could be made that everywhere except Pyeongyang should be hills or mountains, but the bases of valleys and in what plains there were are where most of Korea's population lived, so I thought it made sense to have some flat land to represent that; plus it allows for developing the populated regions.
Over the course of the game's period, deforestation would become a major problem near populated areas, so I thought a couple of highland provinces to portray that makes sense too.
New Province Setup
So, bearing in mind population distribution and terrain, here's my new province setup. These divisions are entirely fictional (and I made a point of not basing them off of more modern divisions, since populations moved around enormously after Joseon opened up), since Joseon was administered first at the provincial level- of which there are only 8 divisions- and then down to the county level, and I'm pretty sure Korea doesn't warrant 300 provinces to represent those.
The exception to that is Gangneung and Wonju, which are pretty pronouncedly divided, since they're separated by the tallest mountains in South Korea, with Gangneung and its region on a very thin strip of coastline beyond those. Unfortunately for me, you guys beat me to that division already so I don't get to take credit.
So for the most part the borders follow terrain, working their way around to accommodate major population centers and flatlands (and each province is based around a town, which are marked in red on the map). I did most of the splitting in the southern provinces since those are the densest by far, and was debating adding another to Jeolla, but thought it'd have clickability issues.
I'm pretty certain about new southern provinces. I think they warrant it more than Hamgyeong, even; I'd say ditch Yukjin and keep second province in Jeolla if there's a limit for some reason, and I think the distribution map I posted earlier illustrates that pretty well. This was a very densely populated part of the world, with these southern provinces alone having several million people at the game's start, which is more than many of the game's nations have in total.
I'm much less certain about Hwanghae being split. The province had no major river or floodplain, and was too far north and too cold for the best paddy farming climate (in the period- today it's North Korea's largest farming center)- the 17th century censuses for instance have it at ~8% of the population, versus ~20% for Jeolla, which'd get the same number of provinces. My main motivation for splitting it was... well, that it looks abnormally large- and today has a much higher relative population (much of the land was reclaimed from wasteland throughout the game's period), so maybe it could have been more populated at the time too if things had gone a bit differently.
The other one I'm less sure about is splitting Gyeonggi. I think it'd make sense since it's the capital, and there are "city" provinces that have far smaller cities (although Hanseong wasn't especially large- estimates are between 200,000 and 300,000 compared to Beijing and Tokyo at around a million) in plenty of other parts of the map. Relative to some of the southern provinces though, Gyeonggi wasn't so well populated it necessitates a new province.
So if Korea doesn't need 6 new provinces, I'd leave those last two out instead of the southern ones. That said, personally I think it's justified to include them, and to illustrate that:
again from this spreadsheet. for Korea, the first population estimate is older but the most widely cited today, the second estimate is newer.
The number of provinces and development of various EU4 polities vs historical populations (pop 1 is the year 1500, pop 2 is 1800, so it gives an idea relative to growth throughout the game). It's very approximate but I think pretty telling- aside from Ming, who is its own unique beast, Korea has by a significant margin the fewest provinces relative to its population, at least of the selected countries, which I tried to make a fairly representative sample.
Even with 6 more provinces, it's fairly low:
But I think that's much more justified. Korea did have markedly worse infrastructure than its neighbors, and wasn't as urban as them nor did it have the same level of mercantile culture. But... not to the point it warrants less than a third as many provinces as them. And Joseon Korea did have other things I've seen get factored into people's decisions for provinces and development, like a relatively high level of education, literacy, and state centralization.
I can go into this a lot more if I need to make my case stronger, but for now I think I've rattled off enough.
Oh, thing about the province naming- every province (except for Yukjin) is named for a town (which is what the provinces were historically- Gyeongsang is Gyeongju + Sangju, for instance), rather than some being named for towns and some based on the old province names while not containing the town they're named for. Also, I standardized the romanization to the Revized system instead of a mix of that and McCune-Reischauer, since it's what's most commonly used in South Korea today.
Trade Goods
proposed map shows a few possible different goods in each province
The big change is that grain should be in the south, rather than the north; the climate meant the overwhelming majority of farming was done in the south, whereas the north has other goods like lumber and furs (among other fur-providing animals, tigers were extremely widespread in Korea until the 20th century). Fish can be just about anywhere. I changed Jeju island to fish instead of Chinaware because of the Haenyeo; porcelain there makes some sense, but I thought it'd be cool to reference them since they're something Jeju is pretty famous for.
Porcelain was produced overwhelmingly in Jeolla and Chungcheong during the Goryeo Dynasty, but in early Joseon, state kilns were established in Gyeonggi (would be in Suwon instead of Hanseong, if Gyeonggi is split though) that took over a lot of the porcelain making, although local porcelain makers were distributed all throughout the country. I'm including books and paper as porcelain in this too, since those were major Korean exports.
Cotton was brought to Korea in the late 14th century and took off like wildfire, it would become one of their major exports, as well as a medium of exchange. In the third quote they reference this a bit- a p'il is 2x40 feet square of material; I spent an hour in vain trying to see how that stacked up against e.g. Bengali exports, but since those seem to be measured in pounds I have no clue. If someone has an idea I'd be interested. Still though, I think cotton makes a lot of sense as a trade good for some provinces.
Finally, tea. This one I'm not so sure about, but I thought I'd suggest it- Korea is famous for ginseng, and it was one of their main exports, both to the Chinese and Japanese- here for instance:
Ginseng can be made into a tea, so... tea? It kinda makes some sense right? I put it in the southeast since that's where Joseon's trading port with Japan was (and the center of trade), but if tea doesn't make sense then that province could work fine as porcelain, cotton, grain or fish.
Miscellany
A couple of final suggestions.
First, the sea tiles between Korea and Ming are pretty huge, and this wasn't historically a region of conflict between China or Korea, so cutting off claims makes sense- the only time China landed an army on Korea's coast before the late 19th century was when the Korean kingdom of Silla facilitated it, as the two of them were fighting a common enemy and wanted to attack from the south. And that was nearly a thousand years before the game starts.
Lastly, climate. I think there's an oversight in the map in the game, because no winter definitely doesn't make sense for Pyeongyang. I'd suggest severe winter for those two northern provinces in Korea (and for Manchuria above them as well)- it gets extremely cold there, as Siberian winds make their way down the inland parts of the peninsula, even though it doesn't get so snowy since winter is during Korea's dry season. I think Swedes have a whole different barometer for temperatures though, so if you're satisfied with it just being normal winter, I'm not gonna complain. The rest of the peninsula should be normal winter instead of mild though, Korea is a cold country during winter- with the exception of the far south, where is in general hotter and more humid.
And that's about it then, for now! Thanks a lot for reading, and I hope this'll make some impact. I have a few other suggestions I'd like to make, but I'm gonna leave them until a bit later since my brain is fried from making these maps all day long and I can't think properly anymore. If there are any questions or you want me to find some more sources, feel free to ask. There is a whole lot more I meant to write but couldn't fit in.
This post is extremely long, so I'm just gonna lead with a quick overview of the major suggested changes for those that don't want to read on:
the gradient in the middle map shows development
Essentially, between 4 and 6 new provinces plus a couple of adjusted borders, redistribution of the development, and an entirely different terrain and trade good setup.
So, why the changes? I'm hoping the terrain at least will be uncontroversial; the Korean peninsula is notoriously mountainous (roughly 70% of the peninsula is mountains), whereas in EU4 it's portrayed as flat. The trade goods in 1.19 have most of the grain in the north and the fish in the south, which is backwards- the overwhelming majority of the farmland is in the south, where the climate is hotter and wetter. Likewise for development; in EU4, Gangwon and Hamgyeong are given some of the most on the peninsula, where historically they were the least populated by far.
As for the extra provinces, I'll go into more detail below, but I believe Korea warrants a few more. I've always been a bit shaky on what criteria are used to qualify new provinces being added- and it's true that administratively, the setup already portrays Korea's borders pretty well. But this was a densely populated and centralized country, and comparing it to other regions in the game, Korea falls well below the average population per province.
Development distribution
I've written down some more detailed numbers on a spreadsheet here.
Here's a comparison between the in game setup of development, and the population distribution according to Joseon registers in percent per province. Now, Joseon censuses and such were notoriously unreliable for a variety of reasons I'll talk about in a bit, but for a proportional spread instead of absolute numbers, they should give an indication.
Several provinces remain practically unchanged, but Gangwon and Hamgyeong- the topright most two provinces- empty out almost entirely. Gangwon is extremely mountainous, and Hamgyeong was a new frontier at this time, and neither were good for agriculture. Even today they're relatively unpopulated relative to the rest of the country, and that was doubly true historically.
The other big change is that the southernmost provinces are a much larger proportion of the country. Insanely so, in fact- at times, more than two thirds of Korea's population were in Gyeongsang, Chungcheong and Jeolla (the bottom 3 mainland provinces)- they're the part of the peninsula most suited towards the far more bountiful wet rice cultivation, so their populations exploded as that made inroads in Early Joseon. This population disparity would level out over time though, and was for most of the game's period, so I used the more even later numbers for the distribution.
Naturally there is a lot of latitude to these numbers if you want to make tweaks, and I'm just suggesting percentages rather than actual numbers, since I realize development levels are often for balance and so on. Here's my proposed distribution down to a finer level than the 8 provinces (the 1's will have to be 3 dev I guess):
Terrain
here are two (one and two) good topographical maps for reference. keep in mind the height scales are different.
I'm not totally sure what qualifies a province to have what terrain, but I gave it my best shot. This is one of the most glaring issues in 1.19- Korea is 70% mountains, and while they're not especially high, they're higher than the ones represented as mountains in southern Manchuria, wheras Korea is entirely flat. Mountains had a huge impact on Korean culture and military policies. Maybe some more provinces (the north part of Gyeongsang in the south, for instance) should be mountains too, but at the very least the northeast and Gangwon should definitely be.
Separating some regions into grasslands I'm less sure about, but I think it makes sense. A case could be made that everywhere except Pyeongyang should be hills or mountains, but the bases of valleys and in what plains there were are where most of Korea's population lived, so I thought it made sense to have some flat land to represent that; plus it allows for developing the populated regions.
Over the course of the game's period, deforestation would become a major problem near populated areas, so I thought a couple of highland provinces to portray that makes sense too.
New Province Setup
So, bearing in mind population distribution and terrain, here's my new province setup. These divisions are entirely fictional (and I made a point of not basing them off of more modern divisions, since populations moved around enormously after Joseon opened up), since Joseon was administered first at the provincial level- of which there are only 8 divisions- and then down to the county level, and I'm pretty sure Korea doesn't warrant 300 provinces to represent those.
The exception to that is Gangneung and Wonju, which are pretty pronouncedly divided, since they're separated by the tallest mountains in South Korea, with Gangneung and its region on a very thin strip of coastline beyond those. Unfortunately for me, you guys beat me to that division already so I don't get to take credit.
So for the most part the borders follow terrain, working their way around to accommodate major population centers and flatlands (and each province is based around a town, which are marked in red on the map). I did most of the splitting in the southern provinces since those are the densest by far, and was debating adding another to Jeolla, but thought it'd have clickability issues.
I'm pretty certain about new southern provinces. I think they warrant it more than Hamgyeong, even; I'd say ditch Yukjin and keep second province in Jeolla if there's a limit for some reason, and I think the distribution map I posted earlier illustrates that pretty well. This was a very densely populated part of the world, with these southern provinces alone having several million people at the game's start, which is more than many of the game's nations have in total.
I'm much less certain about Hwanghae being split. The province had no major river or floodplain, and was too far north and too cold for the best paddy farming climate (in the period- today it's North Korea's largest farming center)- the 17th century censuses for instance have it at ~8% of the population, versus ~20% for Jeolla, which'd get the same number of provinces. My main motivation for splitting it was... well, that it looks abnormally large- and today has a much higher relative population (much of the land was reclaimed from wasteland throughout the game's period), so maybe it could have been more populated at the time too if things had gone a bit differently.
The other one I'm less sure about is splitting Gyeonggi. I think it'd make sense since it's the capital, and there are "city" provinces that have far smaller cities (although Hanseong wasn't especially large- estimates are between 200,000 and 300,000 compared to Beijing and Tokyo at around a million) in plenty of other parts of the map. Relative to some of the southern provinces though, Gyeonggi wasn't so well populated it necessitates a new province.
So if Korea doesn't need 6 new provinces, I'd leave those last two out instead of the southern ones. That said, personally I think it's justified to include them, and to illustrate that:
again from this spreadsheet. for Korea, the first population estimate is older but the most widely cited today, the second estimate is newer.
The number of provinces and development of various EU4 polities vs historical populations (pop 1 is the year 1500, pop 2 is 1800, so it gives an idea relative to growth throughout the game). It's very approximate but I think pretty telling- aside from Ming, who is its own unique beast, Korea has by a significant margin the fewest provinces relative to its population, at least of the selected countries, which I tried to make a fairly representative sample.
Even with 6 more provinces, it's fairly low:
But I think that's much more justified. Korea did have markedly worse infrastructure than its neighbors, and wasn't as urban as them nor did it have the same level of mercantile culture. But... not to the point it warrants less than a third as many provinces as them. And Joseon Korea did have other things I've seen get factored into people's decisions for provinces and development, like a relatively high level of education, literacy, and state centralization.
I can go into this a lot more if I need to make my case stronger, but for now I think I've rattled off enough.
Oh, thing about the province naming- every province (except for Yukjin) is named for a town (which is what the provinces were historically- Gyeongsang is Gyeongju + Sangju, for instance), rather than some being named for towns and some based on the old province names while not containing the town they're named for. Also, I standardized the romanization to the Revized system instead of a mix of that and McCune-Reischauer, since it's what's most commonly used in South Korea today.
Trade Goods
proposed map shows a few possible different goods in each province
"Exports were Korean cotton cloth, rice, hemp, ramie, ginseng, floral design pillows, sealskins, and books" - Michael J Seth, A History of Korea from Antiquity to Present
"Initially harsh, the tribute extracted by the Manchus, who after 1644 ruled China as the Qing dynasty, was considerably reduced in the seventeenth century. Still, each year the Koreans supplied rolls of their prized paper, furs, and bolts of cotton and other cloth." - Seth again
"in 1486 the Ministry of Revenue had to raise the cloth tax to counteract the effects of the halfmillion p’il* being exported each year in exchange for Japanese copper and tin." - Keith Pratt, Everlasting Flower
"Initially harsh, the tribute extracted by the Manchus, who after 1644 ruled China as the Qing dynasty, was considerably reduced in the seventeenth century. Still, each year the Koreans supplied rolls of their prized paper, furs, and bolts of cotton and other cloth." - Seth again
"in 1486 the Ministry of Revenue had to raise the cloth tax to counteract the effects of the halfmillion p’il* being exported each year in exchange for Japanese copper and tin." - Keith Pratt, Everlasting Flower
The big change is that grain should be in the south, rather than the north; the climate meant the overwhelming majority of farming was done in the south, whereas the north has other goods like lumber and furs (among other fur-providing animals, tigers were extremely widespread in Korea until the 20th century). Fish can be just about anywhere. I changed Jeju island to fish instead of Chinaware because of the Haenyeo; porcelain there makes some sense, but I thought it'd be cool to reference them since they're something Jeju is pretty famous for.
Porcelain was produced overwhelmingly in Jeolla and Chungcheong during the Goryeo Dynasty, but in early Joseon, state kilns were established in Gyeonggi (would be in Suwon instead of Hanseong, if Gyeonggi is split though) that took over a lot of the porcelain making, although local porcelain makers were distributed all throughout the country. I'm including books and paper as porcelain in this too, since those were major Korean exports.
Cotton was brought to Korea in the late 14th century and took off like wildfire, it would become one of their major exports, as well as a medium of exchange. In the third quote they reference this a bit- a p'il is 2x40 feet square of material; I spent an hour in vain trying to see how that stacked up against e.g. Bengali exports, but since those seem to be measured in pounds I have no clue. If someone has an idea I'd be interested. Still though, I think cotton makes a lot of sense as a trade good for some provinces.
Finally, tea. This one I'm not so sure about, but I thought I'd suggest it- Korea is famous for ginseng, and it was one of their main exports, both to the Chinese and Japanese- here for instance:
"Japan’s biggest import from Korea was ginseng. In the seventeenth century, when the shogunate debased the coins, it minted a special silver money primarily to buy ginseng." - Seth again
Ginseng can be made into a tea, so... tea? It kinda makes some sense right? I put it in the southeast since that's where Joseon's trading port with Japan was (and the center of trade), but if tea doesn't make sense then that province could work fine as porcelain, cotton, grain or fish.
Miscellany
A couple of final suggestions.
First, the sea tiles between Korea and Ming are pretty huge, and this wasn't historically a region of conflict between China or Korea, so cutting off claims makes sense- the only time China landed an army on Korea's coast before the late 19th century was when the Korean kingdom of Silla facilitated it, as the two of them were fighting a common enemy and wanted to attack from the south. And that was nearly a thousand years before the game starts.
Lastly, climate. I think there's an oversight in the map in the game, because no winter definitely doesn't make sense for Pyeongyang. I'd suggest severe winter for those two northern provinces in Korea (and for Manchuria above them as well)- it gets extremely cold there, as Siberian winds make their way down the inland parts of the peninsula, even though it doesn't get so snowy since winter is during Korea's dry season. I think Swedes have a whole different barometer for temperatures though, so if you're satisfied with it just being normal winter, I'm not gonna complain.
The rest of the peninsula should be normal winter instead of mild though, Korea is a cold country during winter- with the exception of the far south, where is in general hotter and more humid.And that's about it then, for now! Thanks a lot for reading, and I hope this'll make some impact. I have a few other suggestions I'd like to make, but I'm gonna leave them until a bit later since my brain is fried from making these maps all day long and I can't think properly anymore. If there are any questions or you want me to find some more sources, feel free to ask. There is a whole lot more I meant to write but couldn't fit in.
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