Late Joseon official, Silhak scholar and geographer (pen name Yeoam)
| Life | 1712 ~ 1781 |
| Era | 조선 후기 |
| Clan | 고령 신씨 |
Sin Gyeong-jun (申景濬, 1712-1781) was a late Joseon official, Silhak (practical learning) scholar and geographer whose courtesy name was Sunmin and pen name Yeoam. A descendant of Sin Mal-ju, he was born in Namsandae village in Sunchang, Jeolla Province, the son of the licentiate Sin Nae (申淶), a tenth-generation descendant of Sin Mal-ju, and of a daughter of Yi Ui-hong of the Hansan Yi clan.
After moving from place to place in his youth, he lived in seclusion in his home village from the age of 33 to 43, devoting himself to writing; his representative work, the Unhae hunminjeongeum (commonly called Hunminjeongeum unhae, 1750), dates from this period. Modeled on Shao Yong's chart of sounds in the Huangji jingshi, it interprets Hunminjeongeum in the form of a rhyme table and is regarded as the most profound scholarly treatment of the Korean script since its creation.
At 43, in 1754, he passed the augmented civil examination and went on to serve as a remonstrance official, Censor and county magistrate. In 1769, as director of the Royal Genealogy Office, he repaired the Seonwongak archive on Ganghwa Island, and by order of King Yeongjo he supervised a revision of the Yeoji seungnam. In 1770 he was responsible for the geography section (Yeojigo) of the Dongguk munheon bigo and supervised the Dongguk yeojido map. He later served as Royal Secretary and as magistrate of Bukcheong, Suncheon and Jeju before returning to Sunchang in 1779, where he died in 1781 at the age of seventy.
His wide-ranging writings covered philology, phonology and geography as well as technical subjects such as carts, warships and waterwheels; works such as the Ganggyeji, Dorogo, Sansugo, Sayeongo and Garamgo were later gathered in the Yeoam jeonseo. He is often named as the author of the Sangyeongpyo, which organizes the Korean peninsula's mountain ranges into the Baekdu-daegan and its subsidiary ranges, but its authorship and date remain uncertain. His birthplace in Sunchang, the former residence of Lady Seol and Sin Gyeong-jun, is a designated monument, and two old maps he drew, including a map of the northern frontier, are designated tangible cultural heritage kept by the Gwiraejeong-gong lineage.