Teaching spatial thinking with the national atlas of korea: a valuable resource for advanced placement human geography

Summary

This article introduces the second edition of The National Atlas of Korea, published in December 2014 by the National Geographic Information Institute (NGII) of South Korea in both Korean and English, and explores its value as a resource for teaching Advanced Placement Human Geography (APHG) in the United States. The atlas comprehensively covers South Korea's geography and its social, economic, political, global, and historical attributes, and includes a section on demographic, urbanization, and economic data for North Korea collected by South Korea's Ministry of Unification in 2014—information nearly impossible to obtain from any other source, including the CIA World Factbook. The atlas is divided into five chapters: Territory, Government and Local Autonomy, Transformation and Development of the Land, Korea in the World, and Map of Korea. Chapter 3 serves as the geographic and social studies core, detailing the extensive planning and policy decisions behind South Korea's land use and development since the 1953 armistice, with hundreds of maps, charts, and photographs covering topics such as population growth, settlement patterns, migration, economic growth, regional development, resources and energy, transportation, urbanization, education, health, environment, culture, and quality of life. The article emphasizes effective classroom use of the atlas, distinguishing between map reading (extracting information) and map analysis (visualizing patterns and generating new questions), and systematically introduces spatial thinking techniques including visualization and pattern recognition, asking "what if" questions, analyzing geographic attributes, establishing spatial associations, and hypothesis generation, illustrated with specific atlas maps such as commuter growth in the Capital Region. The authors also present four ready-to-use lesson plans and an AP Human Geography Curriculum Articulation document linking atlas resources to the new APHG curriculum, all freely downloadable from the NGII website. The atlas is described as a treasure trove of geographic data, maps, statistics, and photographs that U.S. geography and social studies teachers can utilize to create customized lesson plans, promoting cultural diversity and spatial thinking at no cost.