"길이 한국에 없습니다."
Translation:The road is not in Korea.
No, the topic and subject particles do not alter the meaning that way. "There is/are ~" isn't a Korean structure, but that English meaning can be inferred from the target sentence. Duolingo's translation is only correct if the sentence were something like 그 길이 한국에 없습니다 which is more like "That road is not in Korea." Korean also doesn't have definite or indefinite articles so they could go a step further and say "The/A road(s) are not in Korea."
If the two constructions "There are no roads in Korea" and "The road is not in Korea" in English emphasized "road" or "Korea" more you'd have a point, but where you place both words has less to do with untranslatable "there is/are ~" constructions. Generally, word order in Korean emphasizes what the speaker thinks is more important since word order is way more fluid than in English. So
길이 한국에 없습니다
한국에 길이 없습니다
both mean the same thing in Korean except in what the speaker is emphasizing. "There are no roads in Korea" and "The road is not in Korea" don't convey this difference.
The meaning of 에 shifts depending on the verb you use.
에 with 있다 or 없다 marks the location where the subject exists or not.
에 with verbs of motion marks the location the subject is verbing "to"
에 with verbs not of motion marks the location where something static is happening
You'll learn more location particles when you learn more verbs.
No. The alternative meanings of the particle ~에 arise because of the verb it is used with. ~에 only means "to" when used with a verb of motion:
저는 한국에 갑니다 = "I go to Korea."
저는 한국에 있습니다 = "I am in Korea."
Since 없다 is an existential verb, -에 defaults to the location marker "at". If you want to say "There are no roads to Korea." you would use:
- 길은 한국으로 없습니다