The Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty[a] are the Veritable Records of Joseon, the last royal house to rule Korea. Kept from 1392 to 1865, they comprise 1,893 volumes and are thought to be the longest continual documentation of a single dynasty in the world. With the exception of the records of the last two monarchs that were impacted by the Japanese colonial period, the records are the 151st national treasure of South Korea and listed in UNESCO's Memory of the World registry.
Since 2006,[3] the annals have been digitized and made available online by the National Institute of Korean History. Both modern Korean translations in the Hangul script and the original Classical Chinese text are available.[4] In January 2012, the National Institute of Korean History announced a plan to translate them to English by the year 2033. The work was scheduled to start in 2014 with an initial budget of ₩500 million, but it was estimated that an allocation of ₩40 billion is needed to complete the project.[5]
The Joseon monarchy employed professional historians that maintained extensive daily records on a wide variety of topics relating to the monarchy and state. These daily records were called sacho (사초; 史草; lit. draft histories). The sacho and other materials were used by the Sillokcheong ("Office for Annals Compilation") to compile official histories only after the death of each king and coronation of his successor.[2][6][7]
Great care was taken to ensure the neutrality of the records; historians were guaranteed legal protection and editorial independence, even from the king. Only the historians were allowed to read the sacho; if any historian disclosed or altered its contents, they were subject to severe punishment.[7][6]
A famous example used to illustrate the reliability and extensiveness of the records is that of King Taejong and his horse:[8]
While [the king] was shooting at a deer with a bow and arrow, [his] horse tipped over, he fell off of it, and was not injured. The king looked to his left and right, and said "Do not let the historians know that this happened".[9][b]— The Veritable Records of Taejong, Vol. 7, article 4
While [the king] was shooting at a deer with a bow and arrow, [his] horse tipped over, he fell off of it, and was not injured. The king looked to his left and right, and said "Do not let the historians know that this happened".[9][b]
Both the king's apparently embarrasing fall and his request were recorded by the historians.[8]
The records are all written in Classical Chinese.[2][7] The records of the first three kings of the Joseon dynasty, those of Taejo (r. 1392–1398), Jeongjong (r. 1399–1400), and Taejong (r. 1401–1418), were written by hand. Later annals, from the Annals of Sejong (r. 1418–1450) onwards, were printed with movable metal and wooden type, making Korea the first nation in East Asia to print their royal records in this manner.[7]
Beginning in 1445, they began creating three additional copies of the records, which they distributed at various locations around Korea for safekeeping: the Chunchugwan office in Seoul, Chungju County, Jeonju County, and Seongju County. The non-Seoul locations were considered remote and safe from fire.[10][11][7] Despite this precaution, during the 1592–1598 Japanese invasions of Korea, all repositories except for the one in Jeonju were destroyed. The Jeonju records too narrowly avoided destruction, and were only saved by the private initiative of several scholars. After the war, the government began maintaining five repositories at Chunchugwan, Mount Myohyang, Taebaeksan, Odaesan, and Manisan.[10]
The 1624 Yi Gwal's Rebellion resulted in the destruction of the Chunchugwan repository. It was not replaced; they ultimately returned to printing four copies of the records and storing them at the other repositories. The Mount Myohyang copy was moved to Jeoksangsan in 1633. Part of the Manisan collection was lost during the 1636 Qing invasion of Joseon, and the surviving volumes moved to Jeongjok-san on Ganghwa Island in 1678. Thereafter, the records remained in tact until the end of the Joseon dynasty's rule in the 20th century.[10]
During the 1910–1945 Japanese colonial period, the records went under the control of the Japanese colonial government. The Jeongjoksan and Taebaeksan repositories were transferred to the holdings of Keijō Imperial University in Seoul. The Odae-san copies were taken to Tokyo Imperial University in Japan. There, they were mostly destroyed during the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake. The remaining 46 volumes in Japan were not returned to Korea until 2006.[10]
The annals of the last two Joseon rulers, Veritable Records of Gojong [ko] and Veritable Records of Sunjong [ko], are controversial and considered by modern South Korean historians to lack the imparitality of the other sources. This is because Japanese officials interfered in their creation and curation. They are thus considered relatively separate from the other records, and are not included in the National Treasures of South Korea or UNESCO's Memory of the World register.[12][2][13][14]
Around the liberation of Korea, the Jeoksangsan copies were partially looted during the instability; there are reportedly uncertain rumors that some of these copies were actually taken during the 1950–1953 Korean War to North Korea.[10] The Jeongjoksan and Taebaeksan records were still held in the collection Kyujanggak, at Seoul National University (the successor to Keijō Imperial University). In the 1980s, the Taebaeksan copies were moved to the National Archives of Korea, Busan Center.[10]
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