It has been brought to my attention that historians of premodern Korea have a very special Christmas treat in the form of the annals of the Chosŏn Dynasty (Chosŏn Wangjo Sillok / 朝鮮王朝實錄) now available on the internet, in its entirety. This must be one of the largest ‘books’ in human history and it is now available online in both original hanmun and modern Korean translation. And it’s keyword searchable too.
Seasonal treat for Koreanists
Thank you, Owen. This had made my new year!
And it works quite smoothly. I took it out for a trial spin looking up Sol Changsu, Sol Misu, and Sol Sun, three ethnic Uighurs who played roles in early Yi Dynasty, and, to my deight, I found the index easy to use and that I could easily toggle among the Classical Chinese original text, a Korean translation text, or even view both in a side-by-side view! This is a most welcome tool! What’s next?
Doc Rock
Thank you for your information. It is very useful to study Ming, Qing’s history also.
I am having trouble getting the search engine to work. It seems that I cannot enter anything into it. It does not want to accept the Korean IME. Any auggestions?
I think that, annoyingly enough, the Sillok site has problems with Firefox, so if you are using Firefox you could try it with another browser like IE or Opera. I really wish Korean websites would be more compatible with Firefox. Considering how much fuss was made a few years ago about resisting Microsoft domination of the word processor market you would think that Korean web designers would be very open to non-MS software.
I am surprised at Owen’s problems with Firefox as I had none. I am running Windows XP with Zonealarm Security Suite. The prolems may relate to an operating system glitch, security incompatiblity, or a firewall issue perhaps? I could not search from my work computer which is on a Windows 2000 network with many security features and a good firewall using IE 6.0 browser;however, I think it was because of the lack of a tool which the Sillok website offered to allow to be downloaded, but which I could not do on our work network–at home, I found no such problem or offer. I hope you can work out your issues as the resource is wonderful if you are not near a library with access to the hard copy.
Doc Rock
Perhaps I should spend a bit more time looking at this – when things don’t work I always just assume it’s because of incompatibility with Firefox. I should add that despite my minor problems I also think the site looks to be fantastic.
Actually, I am using IE. I do not know what the problem is. When I try to enter something, it comes out Japanese or blank squares.
Good writing. Do you have an RSS feed where can I suscribe? I tried using bloglines but couldn’t.
Hi there! Links to RSS on the right under “Meta”
http://www.froginawell.net/korea/feed/
I think this is a spambot masquerading as a human. Oh, how far we have come.