Amidst 840238402 other things to do, I am still allocating time to my new-found hobby: the study of Korean history (in Korean). I know I’m just being stupid, but I refuse to study Korean history using any other languages other than Korean. I refuse to look at romanised words.
I am in particular, very very interested in the regime of King Sejong – my favorite king in the whole of history. ^^
I have found an excellent site: The Annals of the Chosun Dynasty!! 😀 😀 So. Awesome. They have annals in the Hangul version, the Hanja version and also a copy of the original Hanja annals!! OMG. *happy*
From a logical point of view, time is running out and I should either be focusing on my school work or studying for TOPIK. But sorry, I’m never known to be rational. This site is like crack 😀
So I’m setting aside all work to pore over the annals 😀
Who cares whether this is ‘useful or not’. I only read what I want to read. ^^
I hope I will get a chance to study Korean history in Korean in Korea! 😀
That would be wayy awesome.
8 Comments
jewirojewtiowji
16 February, 2012 at 12:12 PMwow this is so interesting. I was wondering if you could explain the whole hanja thing and how it was used to record history. I know words like yakusoku (약속) is made up of hanja. What I don’t get is how they wrote korean with only hanja because of the korean grammar and the verb conjugations. I was looking through the site you posted and I clicked on the option for seeing original text in hanja, the picture of the scroll or whatever that is, and the korean and i’m so puzzled.
hangukdrama
17 February, 2012 at 9:52 AMI’ll try to write a post on it next time! ^^ In short, before Hangul was invented by King Sejong, the Hanja characters (Chinese writing system) was imported as a writing system for the Korean language.
blacktortoise2x
16 February, 2012 at 5:51 PMI do the same thing with Japanese history in Japanese(Though I’m not the level you are with your Korean, so its a bit slower going). I dont want to read it in English because I feel like I’ll spoil it, and seeing Japanese romanization disgusts me now.
I knew Japanese used to be written in all Kanji, but I never knew it about Korean… The more you know…
hangukdrama
17 February, 2012 at 9:53 AMI don’t like to rely on Japanese romanization too! But at least the Japanese one is easier to read and much more similar to its real pronunciation than the Korean romanization. There are so many different systems and some are sooo annoying to read. it’s like cracking a code.
Jeannie
17 February, 2012 at 1:37 AMI printed some of the pages when I was in the museum last week! XD I can’t digest Hanja! I wanna learn so bad! I’m learning so much from reading history and 사극!! I love the language so much! When I was at the museum I wanted to steal the books that teaches 한글 in Joseon era! Gahhh!
hangukdrama
17 February, 2012 at 9:54 AMㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ wow i want to see those books too! we will have to go to the library together one day 😀
gamcho
17 February, 2012 at 2:29 AMThat’s so cool! I have never learned anything about Korean History, besides think like Silla and King Sejong haha
That website has so many articles and it’s so fun to read 😀
Thanks for sharing Shanna ^^
hangukdrama
17 February, 2012 at 9:54 AMyou’re welcome! I’m very much fascinated with the site!