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Comment by danielhua | Hacker News Reader

There's a hilarious map projection on the lobby TV in the 8th image. Massive unified red Korean peninsula (practically the size of Australia on the map), tiny sliver for the Japanese islands, and places Korea at the absolute center with all the other continents warped around it. Brilliant.

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It’s common for countries to put themselves in the centre. U.K. does it for English maps, America does it, so does Russia and Australia. And it makes sense too because it allows you to give context to the other land masses (though it’s usually don’t for vanity reasons).

America follows the European convention of putting America on the far left of the world map.

In that case, you should read about this hilarious map called the Mercator projection...

Japan and Korea are more or less on the same latitude and near each other and Japan has slightly more area than Korea. I doubt this is an issue about projection distortion.

That wasn't really my point, but go off I guess

The mercator projection is a projection...a mathematically consistent way of displaying the surface of a sphere as a two dimensional image.

This map is something else entirely. Not even sure what to call it, but it isn't a projection. The korean peninsula is bigger than India. It's a fantasy at best.

I don't see any problem with that map, the ratios are mostly correct.

On that map the Korean peninsula (~220.000 km2) is bigger than Spain (~500.000 km2).

>I don't see any problem with that map, the ratios are mostly correct.

Whaaaaat?

You see the island off the southern coast of the Korean Peninsula, colored red? That's Jeju.

The Japanese island chain is almost unrecognizable; but the largest southern island ought to be Kyushu. In the real world, Kyushu extends significantly south of Jeju and is about twenty times the land area.

The small green island near to and west-south-west of Jeju is Taiwan. In the real world, that distance is more like 700 miles and more like south-south-west. Taiwan is also much larger than Jeju.

At the northern end of Japan, the NK map has Hokkaido as a tiny cross-shaped island on about same latitude as Pyongyang. In fact, it's 75% the size of North Korea and extends significantly past the northernmost extent of the country.

In the real world, Sakhalin - the long, thin island north of Japan - doesn't overlap at all with North Korea's latitudes.

Why shouldn't it? Or should it put the United States at the center of the map, as usual?

I don't think I've ever seen a map that places United States in the center. Is that really a thing?

Drawings of the globe used to, quite frequently, show the Americas.

I've noticed a lot printing it with UK /Europe at the centre I guess it depends on what sphere of influence you live in.

Now there's a map printing shop idea, centering the map on any country you choose.

Centring on GMT is conventional and probably makes more sense than anywhere else. Australians may beg to differ though:

http://img.memecdn.com/australian-world-map_o_1081710.jpg

(I quite like that map, actually.)

I love it as well so interesting to see the world 'upside down',ales everything so unrecognisable.

But GMT is still Eurocentric and unimportant from the perspective of an individual looking at a map, I do wonder if that will ever change?

It still dilates the northern hemisphere and squashes the southern hemisphere though.

Everyone country puts themselves in the center. If you live in America, then the maps you see have America in the center of the globe

My point (and probably my parent's too) is that America has dominated the shared culture for the past 100+ years (in good part thanks to Hollywood). Most people experience world maps and globes in two places: in schools, where they will be local-oriented, and in movies, which will be predominantly American.

(And if you're into science fiction, you've likely internalized the American view of Earth from space without even realizing it.)

I'm not passing judgement here - just saying that cultural influence isn't equal.

Eh, I'm not sure how much influence movies have over maps. I live in the UK which has a very significant cultural influence from the US, but the vast majority of maps I see are centered on the UK.

The movies won't affect your printed maps, or maps you see in serious contexts (like in classroom, or in a BBC article). But I'm willing to bet that in your day-to-day experience, you see a roughly equivalent number of maps in movies and videogames. Which, unless you have non-average watching habits, will most likely be US-made.

I probably do see a fair number of those maps, but the context matters. Such maps are usually in the background and not what I'm paying attention to. If I'm actively using a map then it's a UK centered one 99% of the time.

True. And I inferred the context is about seeing maps in general - which includes movies, games, advertisements, company logos, computer icons, etc. I.e. the situations in which you see depictions of the world (and mentally recognize them as such), not necessarily use them to find your way.

Search map with United States in the center.

If you were schooled in the US, you would absolutely have seen such a map nearly every day.

Edit: Sorry I offended someone! If you were educated in the US and had another experience, I'm not invalidating that. I was in HS a few decades back, and I think they've probably reformed those maps these days

(I wonder if in Australian schools the maps are upside-down. That would be sublime)

New Zealand often complain they are left off maps of the world (it happens more than you think). I do wonder if NZ maps leave off other countries (say the UK) in response.

The map of America, sure. World maps have the Atlantic in the center. How would you even make a world map with the US in the center, split up Asia?

The upstream reply asked "I don't think I've ever seen a map that places United States in the center. Is that really a thing?"

So, your question is different.

But yes, to answer your question, in school we also had global maps that centered the Americas and split Asia so that China was on the left and Europe and Africa was to the right

I think it was split somewhere to the west of India, as I recall. The projection may have been over the US, but Im not positive. It was awhile ago

Edit: here you go: https://crosscultcomm.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/compart_wo...

As far as I recall, that map was never used in my American education. I'm guessing it's decided by state education boards, so either you always had it or never had it.

Yes, that is how it 'works', splitting up Russia/Asia.

I was downvoted simply for suggesting another poster who hadn't seen it before, and was it really a thing, do a search so they could see different examples it.

Other people here are downvoted simply for giving their (American) experience, that maps showed the US at the centre.

Is it supposed to be a secret or something?

I had an American experience in several different schools, and our maps had the Atlantic in the middle. I think that's more common, so people are down voting the posts stating the bizarre America in the center map is a staple of US schools.

It's probably something decided by state education boards, so whichever map your state decided was all you saw for twelve years. Leading you to think the entire US had the same.

I went to public school in San Francisco; Fairfax County, VA; and Springfield, MA. These US-centric maps were all that I saw.

As an aside, I also had 6 years of American Revolution, all told. Every time we moved, the new district would be starting that unit. So annoying

Yes, you could be right with that. I guess not enough kids are playing Risk.

Although it can seem pettily nationalistic (and probably is to some extent), for quickly illustrating "You Are Here", and the relative positions of other countries to your own, centring maybe makes more sense than having some far away country at the centre.

It seems pretty common/natural in different countries too. I wondered if a 'most accurate map' exists, and found Authagraph:

https://ourplnt.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/AuthaGraph-wo...

https://ourplnt.com/authagraph-probably-the-most-accurate-wo...

It's not difficult to find the origin country of the map, Japan.

I’m an American who was in high school in the late ‘90s, and I can’t recall ever having seen such a map before this discussion (though obviously they exist). Perhaps it was changed somewhere in that time span? Or a regional difference?

Edit: perhaps more relevant that I went to private schools, so we wouldn’t necessarily have had the same materials as were chosen by the state.

> practically the size of Australia on the map

Not really

> tiny sliver for the Japanese islands

As in any map

> places Korea at the absolute center

TBH, that sounds more practical.

Maybe not the size of Australia, but compare it to this map I generated (Winkel-Tripel projection) [1] where Korea is correctly sized, and you can see it's easily 2-3 times as big as it should be (in terms of scale).

[1] http://worldmapgenerator.com/maps/20200926110400_map_5f6f040...

Like Russia on any US made map.

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