NASA, National Geographic among sites with errors on Korean history, survey finds

A new survey has found numerous errors and omissions related to ancient Korean history — including the Great Wall of China, Goguryeo and Balhae — on the English-language websites of prominent international institutions such as NASA, National Geographic and UNESCO. Researchers warn that the misinformation could spread further as AI systems increasingly draw on content from credible online sources as training data.

Vank, a South Korean cyber diplomatic group, said Sunday it surveyed 10 major English-language websites and identified 11 cases of distortion or error: five related to the Great Wall, four to Balhae and two to Goguryeo.

Vank said a recurring problem was descriptions that extended the eastern terminus of the Great Wall into Korean territory. NASA's Earth Observatory describes the Great Wall as stretching "from Korea to the Gobi Desert," while National Geographic similarly states that the structure runs "from the Korean border to the Gobi Desert."

Vank said such descriptions align with China's claim that Bakjak Fortress — a Goguryeo fortification — is part of the Great Wall, which China has promoted under the name Hushan Fortress as the wall's eastern starting point. China expanded the officially recognized length of the Great Wall eastward in 2012 when it released a revised measurement.

Descriptions that could minimize or confuse the territorial extent of Goguryeo and Balhae were also found. The UNESCO World Heritage Centre describes Goguryeo's domain only as "northern China," which could lead readers to conflate the kingdom's historical territory with the modern geographic boundaries of China. The survey also found that Goguryeo's founding year was listed inconsistently — as 277 B.C. in some places and 37 B.C. in others.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York limits its description of Goguryeo and Balhae's main sphere of activity to the Korean Peninsula. Vank said this significantly understates the historical reach of both kingdoms, which extended into Manchuria and the Primorsky Krai region.

Errors and omissions were also found on encyclopedic websites. Vank said Britannica classifies regions associated with Balhae as belonging to "China and Korea" while omitting South Korea as a related region, and that Encyclopedia.com makes no separate mention of Balhae — an omission that could lead readers to conclude that Silla ruled the entire Korean Peninsula after 676.

Vank said such errors could carry greater weight in the age of generative AI than in the past. Web pages from globally recognized institutions are likely to be used as reference material not only by search engines but also in the training and response generation of generative AI systems.

"Sentences on the websites of credible institutions are used as databases for search engines and generative AI," said Park Ki-tae, Vank's director. "Correcting Korean history accurately is the core of public diplomacy — it provides the world with the right starting point for digital knowledge."

Based on the survey findings, Vank plans to send letters to the relevant institutions requesting corrections and to continuously monitor whether distortions of Korean history are being reproduced by generative AI.

Vank has a track record of similar work: in 2021, it surveyed 40 major world history textbooks published abroad and found that 29 of them depicted the Great Wall as extending into the Pyeongan region of the Korean Peninsula.