The pictorial map was created in the 1920s as part of the protest against the Japanese imperialists who had been desperately keen on depriving the Korean people of even their names and mother tongue after occupying Korea.

During their colonial rule over Korea, the Japanese imperialists likened the shape of the Korean map to a weak rabbit in a bid to depress the anti-Japanese consciousness of the Korean nation.

But the Korean people illustrated the Korean map with a valorous Korean tiger, the king in the mountains. In the map, the tiger’s backbone represents Great Paektu Mountains and its black lines depict its branch mountains.