Geumgangjeondo (General View of Mt. Geumgangsan)

This view does not exist. There is no point anywhere in the Geumgang range from which you could see what Jeong Seon painted — he combined several vantage points into one image, as though hovering above the whole massif. And yet every peak in it is identifiable and can be matched to a map. It is a record of a place nobody has ever actually seen.

Quick Facts

• Artist: Jeong Seon (1676–1759)
• Korean title: 금강전도 (Geumgang jeondo)
• Year: 1734
• Medium: Ink and light colour on paper
• Dimensions: 130.7 × 94.1 cm
• Status: National Treasure of South Korea
• Period: Joseon dynasty
• Location: Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul

What makes it unforgettable?

For centuries Korean painters worked from Chinese models — imagined mountains, built according to rules taken from manuals.

Jeong Seon walked into the mountains and painted what was there.

The movement he founded is called jingyeong sansuhwa, true-view landscape painting. It was an assertion of cultural self-sufficiency: the claim that Korean scenery was as fit a subject for serious art as anything Chinese.

The paradox of this particular painting is worth holding onto. It is simultaneously accurate and impossible. The individual peaks are recognisable and the arrangement of the range corresponds to reality — but the whole cannot be taken in from any single position. Jeong Seon built a synthetic view.

How the composition works

This is the heart of the painting and the thing most accounts leave out.

The whole thing forms a circle. The mountain range curves round to enclose almost the entire sheet. That is not incidental — Jeong Seon fitted the landscape into a geometric figure.

Inside that circle there is a division that becomes obvious once you see it:

• On the right — rock. Sharp, vertical, rendered with hard dry strokes. These are the granite spires that Koreans call the bones of the mountain.
• On the left — earth and trees. Soft, darker, built from washes and dots. The forested slopes.

The division reads as yang and yin — hard and soft, light and dark, male and female. The painting is at once a topographical record and a cosmological diagram.

At the base, in the centre, a stream runs out; above everything is the emptiness of the sky. The composition closes on itself.

Historical context

The painting dates from 1734, in the reign of King Yeongjo, one of the longest-reigning Joseon monarchs.

Korea was recovering from two invasions — Japanese at the end of the sixteenth century, Manchu in the middle of the seventeenth. China had fallen to the foreign Qing dynasty, which for Korean scholars meant that genuine Confucian civilisation now survived only in Korea.

That conviction had artistic consequences. If Korea was the guardian of civilisation, then Korean landscape deserved to be recorded.

Mt. Geumgang — the Diamond Mountains — had been a pilgrimage destination and a subject for poetry for centuries. It was said to be worth being born in Korea simply to see them.

Jeong Seon went there repeatedly. His first journey was in 1711, at the age of thirty-five.

What to look for

The circle. Step back and take in the whole shape. The range forms a closed ring — the single most striking feature of the composition.

Two kinds of brush. Hard vertical strokes on the right; soft washes and dots on the left. Two techniques on one sheet.

The temple. Low in the composition, among the trees, a Buddhist monastery is tucked away. Easy to miss. Geumgang held dozens of them.

The inscription. Top right, in Jeong Seon’s own hand. In it he writes that anyone wishing to know the twelve thousand peaks can see them while lying in bed, looking at the painting — that painting substitutes for travel.

No foreground. There is no tree, rock or figure from which to begin looking. You enter the range directly.

About Jeong Seon

Born in 1676 in Seoul, into an impoverished branch of the scholar-gentry. He entered government service through patronage and held minor official posts while painting.

He used the pen name Gyeomjae. He lived to eighty-three — very long for the period — and worked almost to the end.

He painted Mt. Geumgang many times: panoramas, individual valleys, particular views. This is the most celebrated of the group.

He also painted Seoul and its surroundings, producing the first realistic depictions of the capital in Korean art.

The mountains you cannot visit

This is what gives the painting its present-day weight.

Mt. Geumgang lies in North Korea, in Kangwon province, just beyond the demilitarised zone.

Between 1998 and 2008 a tourism programme run by the Hyundai group allowed South Koreans to visit. Close to two million people did.

It was shut down in 2008 after a North Korean soldier shot dead a South Korean tourist who had strayed into a restricted area. The mountains have been closed to southerners ever since.

Jeong Seon’s painting has therefore become something it was never meant to be: for most Koreans, the only available view of the place.

There is a double irony in this, given what the artist wrote on the sheet about seeing the mountains without leaving home.

Legacy and influence

Jeong Seon founded a school that dominated Korean painting through the eighteenth century. His pupils and followers continued the true-view tradition for decades.

The painting holds the status of a National Treasure of South Korea. It is worth noting that the old numbering system was abolished in 2021 — the object was formerly listed as No. 217 — because the numbers were widely misread as a ranking of importance.

In Korea the image functions as a symbol of attachment to the land and appears in textbooks, on stamps and in cultural campaigns.

Where to see it today

The painting belongs to the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul, a private institution founded by the Lee family, owners of Samsung. It is in the Hannam-dong district.

• Check before visiting whether it is on display. Works on paper are shown in rotation and for limited periods. This is the commonest cause of disappointment.
• The museum is closed on Mondays. Admission and booking rules have changed several times — check the website.
• The buildings were designed by Mario Botta, Jean Nouvel and Rem Koolhaas. The architecture is an attraction in itself.
• Leeum’s collection of historical Korean art is among the best in the country and includes several other National Treasures.

If the painting is not on view, the National Museum of Korea in Yongsan holds an extensive collection of Joseon painting, including other works by Jeong Seon. Admission to the permanent galleries there is free.

Frequently asked questions

Is this an accurate view of Mt. Geumgang?

Partly. The individual peaks are identifiable and correspond to real formations, but the whole cannot be seen from any single point. Jeong Seon combined several vantage points into one composition.

Why is the painting circular?

The range forms a closed ring, and within it the soft, wooded left side and the hard, rocky right side are read as yin and yang. The work is both a landscape and a cosmological diagram.

Where are the Diamond Mountains?

In North Korea, just beyond the demilitarised zone. A tourism programme allowed South Koreans to visit between 1998 and 2008; it was closed after a tourist was shot dead in a restricted area.

Where is the painting held?

At the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul, a private museum founded by the family that owns Samsung. It is frequently confused with the National Museum of Korea.

Does it have a National Treasure number?

It did — No. 217 — but South Korea abolished the numbering of National Treasures in 2021, on the grounds that the numbers implied a hierarchy. The designation itself remains.

What did Jeong Seon write on the painting?

A short poem stating that by looking at the picture one can know the twelve thousand peaks without leaving one’s bed. For South Koreans today those words read rather differently than they did in 1734.

If this painting has caught your interest, look next at Irworobongdo — a work from the same dynasty that also shows five peaks, but for an entirely different purpose: not to display them, but to seat a king in front of them.

Image: Geumgang jeondo – Jeong Seon (1734), Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul. License: Public Domain. Source: Wikimedia Commons.