The Samguk sagi Translation Project

This is part of an ongoing cooperative project with Prof. Edward Shultz of the University of Hawaii, Manoa to produce an English translation of the Samguk sagi 三國史記. The project is being carried out under the auspices of the Academy of Korean Studies (Hanguk chŏngsin munhwa yŏn’guwŏn 韓國精神文化硏究院) and with guidance of Dr. Hugh H.W. Kang, Professor Emeritus of Korean History at the University of Hawaii, Manoa.

The Samguk sagi (“A History of the Three Kingdoms”) is Korea’s oldest extant history. Its chief compiler was Kim Pu-sik 金富軾 (though he worked with a team of historians whose names have mostly been lost to us), an elder statesman at the court of the Koryŏ king Injong. The work was completed in 1145 and quickly superceded all earlier Korean histories, for better or worse, to take its place as the definitive work on the Three Kingdoms era of Korean history (ca. 57 BCE-935 CE). Though much of its content is to be taken with caution, and some rejected out of hand as patently unhistorical, the work remains an invaluable source for the study of ancient Korea, and indeed one of the few such Korean historical sources at the service of the modern historian.

Briefly, the Samguk sagi follows traditional Chinese historiographical format as established by that Grand Historian of Chinese tradition, Sima Qian (Ssu-ma Ch’ien) 司馬遷 of the Former Han dynasty, in his seminal work Shiji (Shih-chi) 史記 – rendered in English as the “Records of the Grand Historian”. As such, the Samguk sagi is divided into four broad sections: the Annals (Korean pongi 本記) of each of the three kingdoms, a chronological history that varies in its detail; the Year Tables (Korean nyŏnp’yo 年表), which break the history down into tables showing reign titles and corresponding Chinese reign dates, as well as the occurrence of astronomical phenomena; the Monographs (Korean chi 志), more detailed commentary on aspects of Korean life and culture; and the Biographies (Korean yŏlchŏn 列傳), more detailed histories of exemplary figures of the period (exemplary for their good as well as their bad features). My work is being done primarily on the Biographies and on the “Annals of Koguryŏ”.

You may choose to read an introduction to the Samguk sagi I wrote or to proceed directly to the (in some cases still very crude and partial) translations.

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