Where is Korea (on the World Globe)?

[quadibloc]

That is the question which this web page
https://www.mapsnworld.com/korea/where-is-korea.html
purports to answer.
However, while the latitude and longitude lines in the oceans are drawn to make the picture look like that of a globe... the land areas are clearly from the right half of a Van der Grinten projection!

[Atarimaster]

Yeah, graphic designers do such things all the time.
I guess that’s what made Mike Bostock come up with his his This is not a globe example. And about a decade ago, Apple used a dreadful false globe icon for OS X Server.

[Milo]

Wow. I think we found a projection that's worse than Gall-Peters.

I'm not sure how you identified it as the van der Grinten (I tried fiddling a little but it didn't seem to look quite the same... which of the four variations do you mean, anyway?), but I did check what an orthographic projection would look like and it's definitely not that.

The easiest way to tell that something is wrong is to note that Indonesia is clearly south of what the graticule claims would be the "equator". And likewise for other equatorial places like Africa or shouldn't-be-equatorial like India, of course, but Indonesia is the most obvious.

But despite most landmasses being moved further south than they should be, Antarctica is still visible at the bottom of the map rather than falling off the edge. I'm pretty sure the distance between Antarctica and Australia/New Zealand is portrayed as far smaller than it should be, so it's not even just a single "wrong projection", it's a cut-and-paste of multiple. Also, on closer inspection, there's what looks like the Antarctic Peninsula pointing at Africa instead of South America.

I also like how it explicitly demarcates the borders of North Korea and South Korea, and gives the flags of both, but then only lists the capital of South Korea as though that's the only capital of all Korea. I mean, it'd be one thing if you just refused to acknowledge one or the other nation's existence for political reasons (last I checked, both North and South Korea still claim that they are the only rightful government of all Korea, and that the other one is an illegal rebel faction), but at least be consistent about it. Oh, and isn't it supposed to be spelled "Seoul"?

Also speaking of capitals, they apparently felt the need to mark the location of Mogadishu, even though no other city is marked on the map (not even Seoul!) and the map isn't about Somalia. I guess the political situation in Somalia means it isn't all effectively under the control of one government, but even then, singling out Mogadishu alone as being separate from the rest of the nation is silly.

[quadibloc]

I'm not sure how you identified it as the van der Grinten

I didn't check carefully, so it is indeed possible that I was mistaken, as you have said.
It sort of looked like the Mercator, but as one went East, Russia was moving upwards, and it seemed like the bottom of Australia was moving downwards a bit, which is what made me think they took the right half of a Van der Grinten centered somewhere near the Prime Meridian.
As for Mogadishu?
How about the map which was placed on a globe background being ripped off from a newspaper story that included a map that explained where Mogadishu, instead of Korea, was?
In looking for their source, however, I only found another one of their maps.
https://www.mapsnworld.com/somalia/wher ... malia.html
Further searching found a map about missiles from North Korea reaching Guam - but the site, when I went from the image result to the page, asked me to press the Allow button to continue, so I presume it wanted to install malware.
However, I found the same source map on this apparently innocent site:
https://www.packnshift.com/moving-location
One will have to scroll down to the bottom of the page.
Note that the graticule in the oceans also doesn't match the continents - the 49th parallel slopes upwards, but the parallel of 30 north latitude (running north of the 49th Parallel on land) is strictly horizontal.
So somebody is making available vector art or a transparent GIF of the world's continents, and it's being put on backgrounds for map projections that are completely unrelated to the one to which the continents belong.

[Atarimaster]

Wow, mapsnworld.com is really full of, umm, very creative maps (to put it euphemistically).
Look at this one:
http://www.mapsnworld.com/political-world-map-1800.html

The continents look a bit as if they were taken from van der Grinten I (but they aren’t), and it has straight parallels.
According to this map, Denmark is at about 30°N. Also, there’s a meridian that touches New Zealand’s west coast, but does not pass through Siberia.

I guess the n in “mapsnworld” is for NOT.

[Milo]

Wow, mapsnworld.com is really full of, umm, very creative maps (to put it euphemistically).
Look at this one:
http://www.mapsnworld.com/political-world-map-1800.html

Hey, at least that one has "Map Not To Scale" in the small print below it. Though that's kind of understating things.

I guess the n in “mapsnworld” is for NOT.

Well, the "world" part is fairly accurate. It's the "maps" part that seems to be lacking, as I don't think these... images... can be considered to be "maps" in any proper sense.

[Atarimaster]

The continents look a bit as if they were taken from van der Grinten I (but they aren’t)

I just checked again: The continents actually do seem to be taken from van der Grinten I. At least, their shapes, but it looks like they have been somewhat re-positioned. But of course, the graticule still is totally wrong.

[quadibloc]

I just checked again: The continents actually do seem to be taken from van der Grinten I. At least, their shapes, but it looks like they have been somewhat re-positioned. But of course, the graticule still is totally wrong.

On this version of that world "map", though, I see that the mystery lines on Antarctica are indeed the remnants of meridians that they couldn't erase from their source for the continents. Those meridians look like they might be correct.

[Milo]

On this version of that world "map", though, I see that the mystery lines on Antarctica are indeed the remnants of meridians that they couldn't erase from their source for the continents. Those meridians look like they might be correct.

Why the weird-shaped blobs at the bottom of the lines, though? (And for the one directly under the "i" in "Antarctica", it's just weird-shaped blobs all the way down instead of a line.)

[Atarimaster]

Why the weird-shaped blobs at the bottom of the lines, though?

My theory:
They had a van der Grinten I map without graticule lines which was used, as I said, to copy the continents except Antarctica. For the latter, they used a different projection (Robinson or something similar) but this one had a graticule, with labels denoting the longitudes. They were removed bunglingly with the eraser tool.

(And for the one directly under the "i" in "Antarctica", it's just weird-shaped blobs all the way down instead of a line.)

Mabye there was a big “A N T A R C T I C A” label. All the letters where on white background so they could easily be deleted without any visible leftovers. But one letter was overlapping the meridian line …