Never before translated into English, this official history of the reign of King T'aejo--founder of Korea's long, illustrious Choson dynasty (1392-1910 CE)--is a unique resource for reconstructing life in late-fourteenth-century Korea. Its narrative of a ruler's rise to power includes a wealth of detail not just about politics and war but also about religion, astronomy, and the arts. The military general Yi Songgye, posthumously named T'aejo, assumed the throne in 1392. During his seven-year reign, T'aejo instituted reforms and established traditions that would carry down through the centuries. These included service to Korea's overlord, China, and other practices reflecting China's influence over the peninsula: creation of a bureaucracy based on civil service examinations, a shift from Buddhism to Confucianism, and official records of the deeds of kings, which in the Confucian tradition were an important means of educating succeeding generations. A remarkable compilation process for the sillok, or "veritable records," was instituted to ensure the authority of the annals. Historiographers were present for every royal audience and wrote down each word that was uttered. They were strictly forbidden to divulge the contents of their daily drafts, however--even the king himself could not view the records with impunity. Choi Byonghyon's translation of the first of Korea's dynastic histories, The Annals of King T'aejo, includes an introduction and annotations.

"The Artistry of Early Korean Cartography" is a window on the cultural, technological, and even spiritual factors that affected the way Koreans observed themselves, their landscape, and the rest of the world before the twentieth century. How did cartography stand astride the realms of art and science in pre-modern Korea? How do Koreans today understand the roots of their own culture, and what new perspective can their insights lend to our own views of the world? These questions and many others are taken up by three of Korea's leading scholars, Han Youngwoo, Ahn Hwi-Joon, and Bae Woo Sung. In this book, nearly one hundred color images of important cartographic works open up the 'Hermit Kingdom' to reveal its perceptions of itself and the world around it.