Transcriber’s Note
The use of digital editions is greatly enhanced through the use of text search features. That usefulness can be stymied by variations, intentional or not, in spelling. The decision was taken here to attempt to regularize spelling where printer or editorial errors were made, and to a great extent where there seemed to be gratuitous variations.
For errors in the English text, corrections were made where they could be reasonably attributed to the printer or editor, or where the same English word appears as expected elsewhere.
On the other hand, the romanization of Korean words was changing even as this text was being written in the early 20th century. The author notes (p. [iv]) that a system of his own was adopted during the preparation of this text, but a more official system issued by the Royal Asiatic Society was employed later. The result, as he says, is that there are inconsistencies in the spelling of proper names. Since it is impossible to distinquish between printer lapses and this variability, Korean names are given here as they appeared in the text.
Exceptions are made where common names (e.g., ‘Ko-gu-ryŭ’) very occasionally appear without a diacritical mark. These are corrected without further comment. Where the quality of the source text is suspect, the most common version of a given name is used. The system in use seems to solely employ the breve ‘ŭ’, except for the occasional ‘oé’ or ‘ö’. The chapter summaries tend to not use the diacritical marks found in the text.
Another exception is made for the (presumable) misprinting of proper names, which, according to the author’s [Preface], have no hyphen between the patronymic and the following given names, which are hyphenated. Where this rule is violated (e.g., [Keum Su-ro] on p. 51), the hyphen is removed. Where a hyphen occurs at the end of a line, it is retained or removed depending on the preponderance of other instances of the same word.
There is no mention by the author regarding the use of the special characters ʻ and ʼ within Korean names. More modern romanization schemes utilize the apostrophe (ʼ) to indicate aspirated consonants (pʼ, tʼ, kʼ, and Chʼ). In this text, however, though the place-name ‘Pʻyŭng-yang’ can be found much more frequently than ‘Pʼyŭng-yang’, there seems to be no rhyme nor reason to the variations. The former appears most frequently in the first hundred pages, which may imply that it is related to the scheme employed. But both will occasionally appear in different words on the same page. Just the same, every attempt was made to follow the text, using ʻ and ʼ.
The author consistently uses the word ‘geurilla’, where modern usage would have us using ‘guerrilla’ or 'guerilla', and that has been honored here. The author uses ‘allegience’ and ‘allegiance’ interchangeably, and both are retained. ‘Buddhism’ appears twice (pp. 113 & 163) as ‘Budhism’, and has been corrected in both places. The word ‘strategem’ appears as ‘stratagem’ only once, in the description of Chapter XII. The word ‘emissary’ or ‘emissaries’ is misspelled twice, as ‘emmisaries’ and again as ‘emmisary’. Both are noted and retained.