{"id":5864,"date":"2006-05-28T08:43:10","date_gmt":"2006-05-28T13:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.froginawell.net\/korea\/2006\/05\/into-the-archives\/"},"modified":"2014-08-30T14:22:51","modified_gmt":"2014-08-30T14:22:51","slug":"into-the-archives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/2006\/05\/into-the-archives\/","title":{"rendered":"Into the archives"},"content":{"rendered":"

Major source material publication projects for premodern history<\/em><\/p>\n

A bit of a change of pace here, but I thought I\u2019d share a bit of the information I\u2019ve gathered from working on cataloguing Korean books in the library here at SOAS. Of course if you are uninterested in premodern Korean history or have a low boredom threshold this would probably be a good time to click away.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve posted before about accessing the major Chos\u014fn dynasty annals online<\/a>. These have formed the backbone of studies on premodern Korean history during the last few decades, but now it seems the emphasis is moving toward more detailed research using archival sources. What I mean by archival sources are all the surviving public and private documents from the Chos\u014fn period that tend to be called komuns\u014f<\/em> (\u53e4\u6587\u66f8) in Korean. These sources are becoming increasingly available to researchers through a number of massive compilation and publication projects being carried out by some of the main organisations in Korea responsible for promoting the study of Korean history: namely the Academy of Korean Studies (\u97d3\u570b\u5b78\u4e2d\u592e\u784f\u7a76\u9662<\/a>); the National History Compilation Committee (\u570b\u53f2\u7de8\u7e82\u59d4\u54e1\u6703<\/a>); the Kyujanggak library of Seoul National University (\u594e\u7ae0\u95a3<\/a>); and the Korean Classics Research Institute (\u6c11\u65cf\u6587\u5316\u63a8\u9032\u6703<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Below I will look in turn at the collections that each of these institutions is publishing and what they offer for historians. If anyone knows of any important ones that I have missed out, please feel free to let me know in the comments.<\/p>\n

>>Academy of Korean Studies:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Komunso<\/a>
\nKomuns\u014f chips\u014fng<\/em> \u53e4\u6587\u66f8\u96c6\u6210 (76 vols)
\nA very impressive collection of archival materials, often from the archives of individual clans\/families, now at volume 76 and counting. It includes mainly facsimiles of the originals but also some transcribed versions too.<\/p>\n

\"Han\u2019gukhak<\/a>
\nHan\u2019gukhak charyo ch\u2019ongs\u014f<\/em> \u97d3\u570b\u5b78\u8cc7\u6599\u53e2\u66f8 (36 vols)
\nAnother very important collection which seems to have reached volume 36. The materials appear to be similar to those in the Komuns\u014f chips\u014fng<\/em> collection but I think in this collection there is a greater preponderance of reprinted old books and diaries rather than komuns\u014f<\/em> as such. Among recent volumes are two covering the archives of the Pak family of Matjil village in Ky\u014fngsang province upon which the groundbreaking book ‘The Farmers of Matjil Village’ (\ub9db\uc9c8\uc758\ub18d\ubbfc\ub4e4<\/a>, 2001) was based.<\/p>\n

\"Hanguk<\/a>
\nHanguk kanch\u2019al charyo s\u014fnjip<\/em> \u97d3\u570b\u7c21\u672d\u8cc7\u6599\u9078\u96c6 (6 vols)
\nA series of volumes of collected letters including quite a lot written in han’gul (called \u014fn’gan<\/em> \u8afa\u7c21) which could be very interesting for research into Chos\u014fn social history. Seems to have reached at least volume 6.<\/p>\n

>>National History Compilation Committee:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Hanguk<\/a>
\nHan\u2019guk saryo ch\u2019ongs\u014f<\/em> \u97d3\u570b\u53f2\u6599\u53e2\u66f8 (47 vols)
\nThis collection appears to be quite a diverse collection of historical documents, including many that are kept in collections outside of Korea. It turned out to be very useful for me as I discovered a whole new cache of documents relating to the topic of my thesis in one of the volumes dedicated to materials kept in Japan. It is also particularly great because most or all of these materials seem to be available online here<\/a>. <\/p>\n

>>Kyujanggak:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Komunso\"<\/a>
\nKomuns\u014f<\/em> \u53e4\u6587\u66f8 (29 vols)
\nStraightforwardly enough, this is a series of collections of komuns\u014f<\/em> from the Kyujanggak archives. As one might predict, considering this was once the royal library, about half of them consist of collections of government documents. You can find some more information about the contents of the volumes here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Kyujanggak charyo ch\u2019ongs\u014f<\/em> I & II \u594e\u7ae0\u95a3\u8cc7\u6599\u53e2\u66f8
\nAnother couple of volumes of materials from the Kyujanggak archives.<\/p>\n

>>Korean Classics Research Institute:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Hanguk<\/a>
\nHan\u2019guk munjip ch\u2019onggan<\/em> \u97d3\u570b\u6587\u96c6\u53e2\u520a (301 vols?)
\nI’m not sure whether this one really fits in this category, but it is certainly a publication mega-project that dwarfs the others, being a comprehensive collection of the collected works of Korean literati, or munjip<\/em>. On the basis of the holdings in our library it seems to have reached volume 301, but it may have got further than that by now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Major source material publication projects for premodern history A bit of a change of pace here, but I thought I\u2019d share a bit of the information I\u2019ve gathered from working on cataloguing Korean books in the library here at SOAS. Of course if you are uninterested in premodern Korean history or have a low boredom…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,170,211,228,138],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bibliography","category-books-and-articles","category-korea","category-late-chsn","category-libraries"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9yoH3-1wA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5864"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6180,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5864\/revisions\/6180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}