Criticism has been raised that Apple, a global IT company, made an error of marking the entirety of Mt. Baekdu as Chinese territory in the maps installed on iPhones, iPads and MacBooks.



The cyber diplomatic mission VANK announced on the 12th that as of today (12th), if you search for 'Baekdu Mountain Cheonji' on Apple Maps, you can confirm that the whole Cheonji Temple is outside the Korean Peninsula and belongs to Chinese territory.



The map description also introduces the heaven and the earth of Mt. Baekdu as "China, the heaven and earth of Changbai Mountain."



However, on the domestic portal site Naver Maps and Google Maps in the United States, half of heaven and earth are drawn as North Korea and half as Chinese territory.



According to the 'Jo-Chinese Byeongye Treaty', a border treaty signed between former Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai and President Kim Il-sung on October 12, 1962, Cheonji was divided into 54.5% North Korea and 45.5% China.



The northwestern part of Heaven and Earth belonged to China, and the southeast part belonged to North Korea.



Park Ki-tae, the leader of BANK, said, "Because the Cheonji of Mt. Baekdu, which is called the spiritual mountain of the nation, has important meaning and symbolism in Korean history, the fact that the whole of Cheonji is marked as Chinese territory must be corrected."



"Above all, in the reality that billions of people around the world use Apple Maps through their computer or smartphone app and perceive the world's geography through it," he argued, "Apple's distortion of land and earth must be corrected urgently."



Vank sent a letter of protest to Apple demanding that they correct the information error about Heaven and Earth.



The Chinese government defines Mt. Baekdu as 'Mt. Changbai', and has developed the 'Changbai Mountains Cultural Theory', arguing that the area around Mt. Baekdu has been Chinese territory historically and culturally since ancient times.



In particular, by designating Mt. Baekdu as one of the 'Top 10 Famous Mountains in China', Mt. Baekdu is promoting Mt. Baekdu as China's Changbai Mountain.



VANK connects this distortion of heaven and earth with China's Northeast Project.



The Northeast Project refers to a study on the history and phenomena of Northeast China promoted by China from 2002 to 2006 in order to make all the history that unfolded around the Chinese border into Chinese history.



China promoted the Northeast Project to make Korea's Gojoseon, Goguryeo, and Balhae history into Chinese history.



As a result, Vank criticized that the material that extended the Great Wall to Pyongyang, North Korea, is spreading to textbooks, encyclopedias, museums and art galleries around the world.



(Photo=provided by VANK, Yonhap News)