The county tourism site gives 1,025 islands—72 inhabited and 953 uninhabited—while “1,004 Islands Sinan” is a regional brand linked to the Korean word for “angel.” This review found no official basis for attributing the difference to one particular tide-and-vegetation counting rule. Statistics and branding should therefore remain separate.
The nine stories covered earlier in this series — Jeungdo's salt fields, the purple islands of Anjwa-myeon, the peasant movement of Haui Island, and the Yuan dynasty trading ship that once sank in the waters off Sinan — are all stories of different eras and entirely different characters, unfolding within this single vast archipelago. Where Wando was a region whose narrative gathered around a single figure, Jang Bogo, and a handful of major islands, Sinan stands in clear contrast as a region where multiple branching stories coexist without ever converging into one from the very start.
The same official page also contains an inconsistent English sentence giving 857 islands, so 1,025 is cited as the current Korean table value, not an eternal scientific total. Reclaimed or connected islands, survey scale, and definitions can change counts. More important for travel is how islands connect: causeway, bridge, ferry, or no permanent population. The county-office coordinate is only an administrative reference point, not the center or gateway of every island. Each story's port, road link, timetable, and local transport must be checked separately.