In the second place these invasions were made by peoples who, though not literary themselves, had a somewhat high regard for literature, and there could have been no such reason for destroying histories as might exist where one dynasty was forcibly ejected by another hostile one. In the third place the monasteries were the great literary centers during the centuries preceding the rise of the present dynasty, and we may well believe that the Mongols would not seriously molest these sacred repositories. On the whole then we may conclude that from the year 57 B.C. Korean histories are fairly accurate. Whatever comes before that is largely traditional and therefore more or less apocryphal.
One of the greatest difficulties encountered is the selection of a system of romanisation which shall steer a middle course between the Scilla of extreme accuracy and the Charybdis of extreme simplicity. I have adopted the rule of spelling all proper names in a purely phonetic way without reference to the way they are spelled in native Korean. In this way alone can the reader arrive at anything like the actual pronunciation as found in Korea. The simple vowels have their continental sounds: a as in “father,” i as in “ravine,” o as in “rope” and u as in “rule.” The vowel e is used only with the grave accent and is pronounced as in the French “recit.” When a vowel has the short mark over it, it is to be given the flat sound: ă as in “fat,” ŏ as in “hot,” ŭ as in “nut.” The umlaut ö is used but it has a slightly more open sound than[than] in German. It is the “unrounded o” where the vowel is pronounced without protruding the lips. The pure Korean sound represented by oé is a pure diphthong and is pronounced by letting the lips assume the position of pronouncing o while the tongue is thrown forward as if to pronounce the short e in “met.” Eu is nearly the French eu but with a slightly more open sound. As for consonants they have their usual sounds, but when the surds k, p or t in the body of a word are immediately preceded by an open syllable or a syllable ending with a sonant, they change to their corresponding sonants: k to g, p to b and t to d. For instance, in the word Pak-tu, the t of the tu would be d if the first syllable were open. No word begins with the sonants g, b or d.
In Korean we have the long and short quantity in vowels. Han may be pronounced either simply han or longer haan, but the distinction is not of enough importance to compensate for encumbering the system with additional diacritical marks.
In writing proper names I have adopted the plan most in use by sinologues. The patronymic stands alone and is followed by the two given names with a hyphen between them. All geographical names have hyphens between the syllables. To run the name all together would often lead to serious difficulty, for who would know, for instance, whether Songak were pronounced Son-gak or Song-ak?
In the spelling of some of the names of places there will be found to be a slight inconsistency because part of the work was printed before the Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society had determined upon a system of romanization, but in the main the system here used corresponds to that of the Society.
This is the first attempt, so far as I am aware, to give to the English reading public a history of Korea based on native records, and I trust that in spite of all errors and infelicities it may add something to the general fund of information about the people of Korea.
H.B.H.
Seoul, Korea, 1905.
Introductory Note.
Geography is the canvas on which history is painted. Topography means as much to the historian as to the general. A word, therefore, about the position of Korea will not be out of place.