Joseon wangjo sillok (Annals of the Joseon Dynasty)

The Annals record 472 years and twenty-five reigns, day by day, from 1392 to 1863. Court historians wrote them, no king was permitted to read them, and they are among the most complete continuous state records anywhere. The Japanese invasions destroyed every set but one. From 1603 to 1606 the government reprinted four copies from the surviving Jeonju set and built new repositories — on Ganghwa island, on Taebaeksan, on Myohyangsan and on Odaesan — so that no single disaster could take the record again. Money ran short. Three of the four were printed as proper editions; the fourth could not be, so the final corrected proofs were bound and sent to Odaesan in place of a finished copy. That is what this set is for the earlier reigns — a proof sheet standing in for a book, and it is the reason the Annals survived at all.

Original Text

Where it is

Region

Jongno-gu, Seoul

Designation

National Treasure · 국보