Gajeon chunghyo, sesu ingyeong:
A Study of Its Origins in the Sources and Its Process of Transmission
— Centering on the Distinction of Layers between Fifteenth-Century Contemporary Sources and Later Tradition —
Public Edition (Scholarly Volume) --- based on the manuscript of the 16th revision; publication of Chapter Ⅷ and Appendix 6 withheld
Chunhwa Lee (Architect)
August 2026
Gajeon chunghyo, sesu ingyeong:
A Study of Its Origins in the Sources and Its Process of Transmission
--- Centering on the Distinction of Layers between Fifteenth-Century Contemporary Sources and Later Tradition ---
Chunhwa Lee (Architect)
August 2026
Explanatory Notes
This paper is a research draft written on the basis of a documentary survey of public databases and of scholarly and local-history materials. The relevant entries of the Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty were confirmed through the database of the National Institute of Korean History, and for the Seungjeongwon ilgi (承政院日記, Diaries of the Royal Secretariat) the original text of the entry for the 18th day of the 7th month of the 2nd year of King Gyeongjong (1722; lunar calendar) was obtained directly and analyzed. In the 6th revision, the physical pages 550–579 of Part 6 of the Jeonui Yean Yissi cheonnyeonsa (Thousand-Year History of the Jeonui and Yean Yi Clans; 1999) were obtained, and the full Classical Chinese text and Korean translation of the “Record of Conduct of Lord Hyojeong at Songcheon Academy” (pp. 573–576), the excerpt of the spirit-path stele inscription (p. 570), the full text of the publication preface of the Korean-translation edition (1990) of the Gyeongsujip (Collection Celebrating Longevity) (pp. 559–560), and the wording of the clan's official account of 1999 were directly confirmed and analyzed. In the 7th revision, the physical pages 860–865 of the Documentary Records in Part 7 of the same book and a re-read copy of p. 572 of Part 6 were additionally obtained, and the full Classical Chinese text of the spirit-path stele inscription (pp. 860–861) and its Korean translation (pp. 861–864), the original text and translation of the “Tomb Marker of Lady Kim, Jeongdaebuin” (1445) (p. 860), the “Stele Inscription at the Former Site of Lord Hyojeong, personal name Jeong-gan” (pp. 864–865), and the title of the literary collection cited on p. 572 (Nongsujip (聾叟集)) were directly read and analyzed. The 8th revision is not an addition of new physical materials but a revision of structure. The compilation process of the Jeonui Yean Yissi cheonnyeonsa was separated into an independent chapter (Chapter Ⅴ) to systematize the compilation organization, the division of writing, and the relations of citation; a reception-history chapter (Chapter Ⅵ) dealing with the process by which the eight characters became established as the representative family precept was newly created; and the roles of those involved in the compilation were arranged in a table distinguishing confirmed/unverified item by item. The few newly mentioned items, such as the wording of public monuments, rest on reproductions in press reports, and the main text states explicitly that on-site inspection is needed. In the 9th revision, the physical pages of the end matter of the Cheonnyeonsa — p. 1133, “Those Who Helped in Compiling This Book” (the compilation roster in order by the three branches); pp. 1134–1135, “Editorial Afterword” (主筆 Yi Tae-ho, June 1, 1999); and the colophon (first edition printed and published June 1, 1999; enlarged edition published April 30, 2002) — were additionally obtained, and the account of the full roster of the compilation organization, the attribution of authorship by Part, the editorial principles of the chief writer, and the edition history was updated. Since the existence of the enlarged edition (2002) was newly confirmed by the colophon, the collation of whether the pages this paper has been citing belong to the first edition or to the enlarged edition is added as a new follow-up task. The 10th revision is not an addition of new physical materials but a reinforcement of methodology. Applying the philological method of reconstructing manuscript lineages (stemma codicum) to the reconstruction of the lineage of a narrative tradition, a chapter (Chapter Ⅶ) was newly created that reconstructs the relations of citation among documents and the points of first appearance of the elements of the tradition in a stemma, a comparison table, and a chronology; within it the methodological status of the ’silence of the sources’ was set out in a separate section; and a chapter stating the significance of the research and its final principles (Chapter ⅩⅢ) was placed after the conclusion. Accordingly, the former Chapters Ⅶ–Ⅺ moved to Chapters Ⅷ–Ⅻ. In the 11th revision, going beyond the analysis of the transmission and compilation of the sources, a chapter was newly created that deals with the modern and contemporary operation and conflict structure of the very organization that has preserved and managed those sources (Chapter Ⅷ, “Changes in Modern and Contemporary Clan Management and in the Structure of Conflict”). Accordingly, the former Chapters Ⅷ–ⅩⅢ moved to Chapters Ⅸ–ⅩⅣ. The new chapter aims not at criticism or defense of any particular person but at analysis of the structure by which conflicts form and recur; it applies in the same way the principles of expression of the whole paper ('is confirmed / is handed down as tradition / is presumed / is not confirmed to date') and excludes categorical statements not proven by the sources. In addition, a declaration of Open Historical Research was added at the end of the paper, stating explicitly that this is research whose analysis and conclusions are revised and supplemented whenever new primary sources are obtained. In the 12th revision, two materials were added. First, the history of genealogy publication in the “Record of Genealogy Publications” on the website of the Jeonui Yi Clan Bujeonggong Branch Association (www.jlbj.net, accessed July 15, 2026), by which the compiling parties, edition forms, and state of survival of the Mallyeok edition and the Sungjeong edition (Mallyeok edition 現無傳; Sungjeong edition the oldest extant edition and extremely rare) were newly confirmed. From its wording this material is presumed to be a reproduction in the line of the Historical Records section of the opening volume of the Gyeongo comprehensive genealogy (1990), but collation with the original source is a follow-up task. Second, it was confirmed that the Jangseogak Archives of the Academy of Korean Studies hold a wooden-movable-type Jeonui Yi clan genealogy in 10 volumes, 10 fascicles (call number K2-1782, compiled by Yi Deok-yong et al., 1754), judged to be a physical copy of the Yeongjo-era Gapsul edition, and that its original-text images are made public in the Digital Jangseogak. Accordingly, the sections on the Mallyeok edition, the Sungjeong edition, and the Gapsul edition in Chapter Ⅲ and the bibliography were updated, and the task of searching for the original of the Mallyeok edition was reset as a route of confirmation through the prefaces and postfaces reproduced in the opening volume of the Gapsul edition and through the Cheonggangjip (Collected Works of Cheonggang). The collation of the original-text images of the Jangseogak copy with the transcription obtained by this paper remains a task for the next revision. In the 13th revision, one layer of description was added to Chapter Ⅷ. It is a layer that, in areas of modern and contemporary management history where documentary sources are absent, registers the oral testimony of parties to the conflict and persons concerned as [Party testimony]; testimony cannot in itself be a ground for a determination of fact, and moves to [Fact] only after verification by an independent primary document. In addition, it was disclosed by a positionality statement that the author of this research is a party to the second-period conflict. The author's testimony, too, is subject to verification in the same way as other testimony, and the author's status as a party is controlled not by concealment but by explicit statement. In the 14th revision, as photographic copies of the originals of the “Demand for Explanation” (2023), of the appeal (written January 11, 2023, sent February 6), and of the petition, and the account of the establishment of the shrine-hall name in the Gyeongwollok, were obtained, the existence of the opposition, among the testimonies relating to the first period in Chapter Ⅷ, section 2, was moved to [Fact]; cited evidence of the wording of the postface ("首冠家訓尊世也") was added to the Mallyeok edition section of Chapter Ⅲ; the nodes of the narrative in 1990 ('personal writing' in the preface to the Gyeongo edition) and in 2022 ('royal calligraphy' in the Baengnyeonsa [Hundred-Year History]) were fixed; and the general principles for verifying material evidence were stated explicitly in Chapter Ⅷ. In the 15th revision, the full text of the postface of the Mallyeok edition (Attachment <2> to the petition; a copy of the version reproduced in the clan genealogy) was obtained, so that the reading of the disputed phrase ("首冠家訓尊世守也"), the attribution of authorship of the family-precept articles ("若家訓等條則持平所述云" --- Yi Je-sin), the structure of joint compilation, and the date of the postface (1575) were fixed, and a text-critical judgment on the excluding reading was presented in Chapter Ⅲ. In addition, by the notation "一石 熙昇" in the handwritten memo “Jongsa sogo,” the question of whether Clan Association president Hui-seung and the Korean linguist Yi Hui-seung are the same person was in effect settled, and a ledger of documents by person was newly created as an appendix. In the 16th revision, the Jeonuiin-ui yeoksa-wa bit (History and Light of the Jeonui People; Eunwagong Lineage, 2011) was obtained, and by the address of encouragement of Yi Yong-ho (2011) on p. 12 the existence of a change of position on the eight characters (praise in 2011 → demand for prohibition in 2023) was fixed as [Fact]. It was confirmed by physical collation that the photograph of the Mallyeok edition is contained in neither the Cheonnyeonsa nor the Jeonuiin-ui yeoksa-wa bit, and the source containing it was corrected to unknown and the candidates were specified (the record of self-correction of the mistaken notation of the source containing it is left in these Explanatory Notes). In the final editing (Final Edition), only the following editorial adjustments were carried out, with no change of content or conclusions: 52 repeated footnotes to the same source were reduced to short-form re-citations; the notation of the Seungjeongwon ilgi in the main text (double corner brackets) was unified; a table of contents was newly created; and misprints and punctuation were corrected. The short-form source notation inside the chronology and stemma tables (omission of double corner brackets) was retained as table style. However, since the Record of Conduct, the spirit-path stele inscription, and the tomb marker are confirmed by way of the transcriptions (轉寫) contained in the Cheonnyeonsa, collation with the original held by the academy and with the physical steles and rubbings, and inspection of the originals of the genealogy editions (the Mallyeok edition, the Gapsul edition, and others), still remain follow-up tasks. In the main text the grade of each source and its state of confirmation are stated each time.
The layers of description are strictly divided into the following five. ① Historical facts that are confirmed (those confirmed by contemporary officially compiled sources or sources equivalent to them), ② later records (records written at a point after the event, whose time of writing is confirmed), ③ clan tradition (what is handed down within the clan but whose time of writing and source are unclear), ④ the views of scholarship and public institutions, and ⑤ the parts not confirmed to date. Expressions were limited to 'is confirmed,' 'is handed down as tradition,' 'is presumed,' and 'is not confirmed to date.' In addition, the layers of origin of the documents are marked by dividing them into five — ⑴ fifteenth-century contemporary records, ⑵ later officially compiled records, ⑶ genealogy records, ⑷ documents of clan and academy tradition, and ⑸ modern compilations — and records of different layers are not mixed on the same plane.
Abstract
This paper examines the origins in the sources and the process of transmission of the eight characters of the family precept of the Jeonui Yi clan (全義李氏), “Gajeon chunghyo, sesu ingyeong (家傳忠孝 世守仁敬)” (loyalty and filial piety handed down in the family; benevolence and reverence kept through the generations). In the Sejong sillok (世宗實錄, Veritable Records of King Sejong), an officially compiled source equivalent to a fifteenth-century contemporary one, it is confirmed that on the 25th day of the 4th month of 1432 (Sejong 14; lunar calendar), King Sejong specially appointed Yi Jeong-gan (李貞幹, 1360–1439) Jaheon daebu and Commissioner of the Central Council, bestowed on him a staff and armrest (几杖), and issued a royal edict commending his filial conduct.1 However, in none of this edict, the memorial of thanks submitted by Yi Jeong-gan on the 3rd day of the 5th month of the same year (lunar calendar), the obituary notice of Yi Jeong-gan of the 27th day of the 9th month of 1439 (Sejong 21; lunar calendar), the “Tomb Marker of Lady Kim, Jeongdaebuin” composed in 1445 (Sejong 27) by his son Yi Yang-gan (李良幹), and the spirit-path stele erected in 1456 (Sejo 2) — in the 7th revision the full Classical Chinese text contained in Part 7 of the Jeonui Yean Yissi cheonnyeonsa (1999) (the entire range of preface, lineage, and inscription) was directly read — is the bestowal of royal calligraphy of the eight characters confirmed to date.2
Within the range of materials confirmed to date, the earliest record attributing the eight characters to the handwriting of King Sejong is reported to be the “Samjoseol (三條說)” in the opening volume of the Mallyeok edition (萬曆譜) of 1574 (Seonjo 7) (collation with the original needed). As an officially compiled record, in the memorial petitioning for a royal charter by Confucian scholars of Cheongju, contained in the Seungjeongwon ilgi entry for the 18th day of the 7th month of the 2nd year of Gyeongjong (1722; lunar calendar), the statement is confirmed that "at last, in the king's own hand, he wrote the eight large characters Gajeon chunghyo, sesu ingyeong and thereby commended him (遂以御筆, 書家傳忠孝世守仁敬八大字, 以褒之)"; this is the first case confirmed to date in which the term 'royal calligraphy' (御筆) and the full text of the eight characters appear in an officially compiled document.3 Its nature, however, is not an independent confirmation by the state but a citation of local and Confucian-literati tradition, which states of itself that "the people of the district to this day speak of it with admiration (州人至今艶稱之)." By contrast, the only relevant entry in which the court is the acting party, the record of the bestowal of a staff and armrest on the descendant Yi Jing-seong in the 49th year of Yeongjo (1773), does not mention royal calligraphy, suggesting that the official narrative of the court centered on the staff and armrest.4 Meanwhile, the postface by Yi Jing-guk (李徵國) at the time of the recompilation of the Gapsul edition (甲戌譜) of 1754 (Yeongjo 30) testifies that 'the eight characters had been printed (印行) at the head of the old genealogy (舊譜), but there was no explanation of whose handwriting it was.' That is, the inclusion of the eight characters themselves in the genealogy and the putting into express words of the attribution to Sejong are separate layers with different points in time. The understanding of them as royal calligraphy was made official at the level of the clan at the stage of the Gapsul edition, with the Seowon haengnok (Record of Conduct of the Academy) of Songcheon Academy and the hand-writing (手書) of Lord Cheonggang as its sources; but the terms of the Classical Chinese original of the postface that has been obtained are not 'royal calligraphy' (御筆) but hand-writing (手書) and special bestowal (特賜), and the naming as 'royal calligraphy' is confirmed to be a supplement at the stage of the Korean translation. In this 6th revision, the full Classical Chinese text of the Seowon haengnok cited by the postface was obtained directly by way of the transcription contained in the Cheonnyeonsa, and it was confirmed that the phrase cited by the postface, "世宗大王手書賜家傳忠孝世守仁敬八字," exists as it stands in the wording of the Record of Conduct (corroboration of the chain of sources). It was directly confirmed that the term of the Record of Conduct, too, is not 'royal calligraphy' but 'hand-writing (手書)'; it emerged that the Record of Conduct accurately reflects the classical precedents of the edict contained in the Veritable Records (崔鄲·徐積, 唐宣宗·宋仁宗), so that its writer was aware of the wording of the edict; and since the Record of Conduct itself mentions the publication of the Gyeongsu poems and prefaces (first printed 1509) and is cited in the postface of the Gapsul edition (1754), its formation was narrowed to between 1509 and 1754. Thereafter it became widely known through the confirmation by Yi Geuk-ro (李克魯) in 1937 and through press reports. Meanwhile, the superlative expression 'composed and written by the king (御製御筆)' had previously been understood as an addition at the stage of modern clan documents (2022 and after), but in the 6th revision it was confirmed that the main text of the Cheonnyeonsa (1999) already carries the narrative of the deathbed visit and of the king's own composition and calligraphy, so that the possibility was opened that the time of this addition goes back to 1999 at the latest and, further, to an earlier document cited by the Cheonnyeonsa. In the 7th revision the title of that cited document was fixed as Nongsujip (聾叟集) by the re-reading of p. 572, but a literary collection of this title has not been identified in public databases to date, and confirmation of a physical copy remains the highest-priority follow-up task.5 Today the state has not officially recognized this as the royal calligraphy of Sejong, and at the level of scholarship and local gazetteers the description 'presumed to be a carved reproduction (模刻) or traced copy (模寫) of the royal calligraphy of Sejong' is in common use.6
In the 8th revision, the compilation process of the Cheonnyeonsa (1999) was analyzed as an independent chapter; the compilation organization confirmed by the wording of the publication preface and the foreword — chairman of the publication committee, chairman of the editorial committee, division of writing by branch, review, and publisher and specialist supervisor — was reconstructed; and it was stated explicitly from the sources that publisher and writer are not the same concept. The deathbed-visit account and 'composed and written by the king' are narrative elements first confirmed at the stage of the Cheonnyeonsa, but the reservation was maintained that until the cited document Nongsujip is identified, the agent and the time of their origination are not specified. In addition, the reception history by which the eight characters became established as the representative family precept, passing through the media of the head of the genealogy, the academy, entry in officially compiled records, modern press reports, epigraphy, Korean-translation publications, public monuments, the comprehensive clan history, and documents posted by the clan, was reconstructed in chronological order, and tasks of on-site inspection of uninvestigated media such as name plaques, folding screens, hanging scrolls, ritual documents, and educational materials were designed.
In the 9th revision, the physical pages of the end matter of the Cheonnyeonsa (pp. 1133–1135) and of the colophon were obtained. By the compilation roster on p. 1133, the chairman of the review committee (Heung-se), the overall arrangement and editing (Tae-ho), the proofreading (Tae-se), and the division of writing by Part were fixed by the wording; in particular, it was confirmed that Jong-gwan (鍾寬) is expressly recorded as the writer of Part 1 and of the history of the Seonbu Jeonseogong branch in Part 6, so that the fact was added that Yi Jong-gwan, who was the publisher and specialist supervisor, is also listed in the roster as the writer of particular Parts. The editorial afterword on pp. 1134–1135 (主筆 Yi Tae-ho), together with the period of writing (November 1, 1998–June 1, 1999, a full seven months), states explicitly the editorial principle that the attempts of some clan members to embellish the deeds of their own direct ancestors (直祖) by exaggeration or falsehood were deleted out of the scholarly conscience that 'history cannot be distorted,' and so confirms that the final wording passed through the editorial judgment of the chief writer. By the colophon, the edition history of the first edition (June 1, 1999) and the enlarged edition (April 30, 2002) was fixed. The attribution of authorship of the portion to which the pages carrying the deathbed account and 'composed and written by the king' belong was narrowed, on the roster, to lead writer Yi Tae-ho and writer Yi Jong-gwan, but the reservation is maintained that the actual division between the two and whether the description in question was originated or reproduced are not specified until the cited document Nongsujip is identified.
The conclusion of this paper is not support for a particular view but the distinction of layers. (1) The special commendation (褒獎) by Sejong and the bestowal of the staff and armrest are confirmed as fact. (2) The attribution of the eight characters to Sejong first appears, within the range confirmed to date, in records from the late sixteenth century onward, and is not confirmed in fifteenth-century contemporary sources. (3) Not confusing these two layers is the way to describe this family precept faithfully to the facts without damaging its historical value. In the 10th revision, the above examination was synthesized by the method of manuscript stemmatics (stemma codicum), and a chapter (Chapter Ⅶ) was newly created that reconstructs the relations of citation among documents and the points of first appearance of the elements of the tradition in a stemma and a comparison table.
Keywords: Gajeon chunghyo sesu ingyeong, Yi Jeong-gan, royal calligraphy of King Sejong, Jeonui Yi clan, Mallyeok edition, Gapsul edition, Songcheon Academy, Samjoseol
Contents
Ⅰ. Introduction
Ⅱ. Review of Previous Research and the State of the Materials
Ⅲ. Analysis of the Sources: Examination in Order of Time of Writing
Ⅳ. Comparison of Documents: Changes in Expression
Ⅴ. Modern and Contemporary Transmission and the Compilation Process of the Jeonui Yean Yissi cheonnyeonsa
Ⅵ. The Reception History of “Gajeon chunghyo, sesu ingyeong” --- The Process of Its Establishment as the Representative Family Precept
Ⅶ. Reconstruction of the Stemma of Transmission (Stemma Codicum) of “Gajeon chunghyo, sesu ingyeong”
Ⅷ. Changes in Modern and Contemporary Clan Management and in the Structure of Conflict
Ⅸ. Chronological Summary
Ⅹ. Results of the Examination of the Key Questions
Ⅺ. Analysis of the Process of Transmission
Ⅻ. Historical Assessment
ⅩⅢ. Conclusion
ⅩⅣ. The Significance of the Research and Its Final Principles
Bibliography
Appendices
※ Page numbers will be entered after the typesetting is finalized.
Ⅰ. Introduction
1. Purpose of the Research
The eight characters “Gajeon chunghyo, sesu ingyeong” are handed down as the representative family precept of the Jeonui Yi clan (全義李氏) and of the Yean Yi clan (禮安李氏), which branched from it, and are widely known as royal calligraphy bestowed by King Sejong on the filial son Yi Jeong-gan. However, 'being widely known' and 'being confirmed by the sources' are different matters. The purpose of this research is to reconstruct, following the order of the time of writing of the sources, when and in which document these eight characters first appear, and from when and through which sources the understanding of them as the royal calligraphy of Sejong was formed. The goal is not to defend or deny any view, but to make clear the boundary between what can be confirmed and what is not confirmed.
2. Research Method and Principles of Description
First, all records are arranged by the standard not of 'the time of the event the record deals with' but of 'the time at which the record was written.' If the bestowal of royal calligraphy is a fact, it would be a matter of around 1432, but the ground for judging whether it is a fact is the time of writing and the nature of each record. Second, the sources are graded. This paper distinguishes Grade 1 (officially compiled sources based on contemporary historiographers' drafts: the Veritable Records), Grade 2 (epigraphy and collections of poetry and prose from a period close to the event: the spirit-path stele, the Gyeongsujip), Grade 3 (genealogy prefaces and postfaces whose time of writing is confirmed: the Samjoseol, the postface of the Gapsul edition), Grade 4 (clan and academy records whose time of writing and source are unclear: the Seowon haengnok), and Grade 5 (press reports, local gazetteers, and general surveys from the modern period onward). Third, conjecture is excluded and judgment is limited to the four expressions 'is confirmed / is handed down as tradition / is presumed / is not confirmed to date.' Fourth, the layers of origin of the documents are divided into ⑴ fifteenth-century contemporary records, ⑵ later officially compiled records, ⑶ genealogy records, ⑷ clan and academy tradition, and ⑸ modern compilations, and the relations of citation and source between the layers are stated explicitly. Fifth, as to the roles of persons, both statements that someone 'made it, made it up, created it, or distorted it' and statements that someone 'had no role at all' are excluded, and description is confined to the range directly proven by the sources, such as office, wording, and signature (Chapter Ⅴ, section 1).
3. Limitations of the Research
This paper has the following limitations. The originals of the Mallyeok edition (1574), the Sungjeong edition (崇禎譜, 1634), and the Gapsul edition (1754) and the original of the Seowon haengnok could not be inspected directly, and for those parts it relied on citations in secondary materials such as press reports and local gazetteers. For the Seungjeongwon ilgi, the original text of the entry for the 18th day of the 7th month of the 2nd year of Gyeongjong (1722; lunar calendar) was obtained and analyzed, but an exhaustive search of the preceding and following entries, such as the entry on the subsequent handling of that memorial by the Ministry of Rites, was not completed. Accordingly, those of this paper's conclusions that concern the genealogy and academy documents are provisional conclusions that may be revised by collation with the originals, and this is stated explicitly in the main text. This is less a defect than also a list of tasks for follow-up verification.
Ⅱ. Review of Previous Research and the State of the Materials
No scholarly article dealing squarely with this subject was confirmed within the range of this survey. Related descriptions are confirmed broadly in three strands. First, the entry “Gajeon chunghyo, sesu ingyeong” in the Encyclopedia of Korean Local Culture (Digital Guro Culture Encyclopedia) of the Academy of Korean Studies sets out, in the form of a bibliographical note on the artifact (a traced copy), the circumstances of its discovery and the question of its script style, and carries the assessment that 'it is regarded not as the actual handwriting of Sejong but as a traced copy.'7 Second, an investigative press report (Sejong Daewang Sinmun, 2024) collated the Veritable Records, the spirit-path stele, and the genealogy prefaces and postfaces and set out the process by which the attribution to royal calligraphy was formed; it introduces the content of the Samjoseol of the Mallyeok edition and of the postface by Yi Jing-guk in the Gapsul edition and is therefore an important reference. However, as it is a press article, the accuracy of its citation of the original texts must be reconfirmed by collation with the originals, and in fact, when this paper obtained and collated the Classical Chinese original of the postface, differences between the Korean translation in the report and the original were confirmed in terminology (absence of 'royal calligraphy') and in the phrase giving the source (the hand-writing 'after' the Samjoseol) (see Chapter Ⅲ, section 3).8 Third, in the field of bibliography, the 2005 study by Cheon Hye-bong, in dealing with the calligraphy album “Sejong daewang eosa Huiujeong Hyoryeong daegun bangmun,” presumed to be in Sejong's own hand, provided a standard for comparison of script styles.9
As to the state of the materials, the Sejong sillok can be consulted in both original text and Korean translation in the database of the National Institute of Korean History. For the genealogy of the Jeonui Yi clan, a lineage of editions is confirmed running from the Seonghwa draft genealogy of 1476 (in the form of a draft genealogy; original not transmitted)10, the Mallyeok edition of 1574, the Sungjeong edition of 163411, and the Gapsul edition of 1754 to the later revised genealogies, and later editions are held in the Jangseogak Archives of the Academy of Korean Studies and elsewhere.12 In addition, the comprehensive clan history Jeonui Yean Yissi cheonnyeonsa (1999) has been published; in this 6th revision the physical pages 550–579 of its Part 6 (history of the three branches; Seonbu Jeonseogong branch) were obtained, and the full Classical Chinese text and Korean translation of the Record of Conduct in the section “Songcheon Academy and the Record of Conduct of Lord Hyojeong” (pp. 573–576), the excerpt of the spirit-path stele inscription (p. 570), the publication preface of the Korean-translation edition of the Gyeongsujip (pp. 559–560), and the wording of the clan's official account of 1999 were directly confirmed.13 The full text of the spirit-path stele inscription of Lord Hyojeong (p. 860) and the inscription of the former-site stele (p. 864) in the Documentary Records, and the “Joseon gahun” [Family Precepts of Joseon] (p. 14), are the remaining routes of verification. Songcheon Academy is an academy in Cheongju enshrining Yi Jeong-gan, which was demolished in 1871 and restored in the 1970s; p. 573 of the Cheonnyeonsa confirms the description of the bibliographical-note literature, giving foundation in Eulhae, the 21st year of Sukjong (1695), and the royal charter in Sinmyo, the 37th year of Sukjong (1711) (though the Western-calendar year '1696' given alongside in the Cheonnyeonsa appears to be an error in converting the Eulhae year, and for the year of restoration too there is a difference of one year, 1975 in the Cheonnyeonsa and 1976 in the bibliographical-note literature).14 However, the dates of foundation and charter still conflict with the self-statement of the 1722 memorial confirmed by this paper (foundation 丙戌間; royal charter not yet received), and so are treated as provisional (see Chapter Ⅲ, section 2).15 The state of survival of the original of the Seowon haengnok held by the academy was not confirmed in this survey, but its wording was obtained by way of the transcription contained in the Cheonnyeonsa (see Chapter Ⅲ, section 4).
Ⅲ. Analysis of the Sources: Examination in Order of Time of Writing
1. Fifteenth-Century Contemporary Sources — Historical Facts That Are Confirmed
A. The Royal Edict of the 25th Day of the 4th Month of the 14th Year of Sejong (1432; Lunar Calendar) in the Sejong sillok (世宗實錄, Veritable Records of King Sejong)
In the Sejong sillok it is confirmed that on the 25th day of the 4th month of 1432 (Sejong 14; lunar calendar), King Sejong, commending the filial conduct of Yi Jeong-gan, issued a royal edict specially appointing him Jaheon daebu and Commissioner of the Central Council (senior second rank) and bestowing on him a staff and armrest (几杖).16 The edict cites the classical precedents of Cui Dan (崔鄲) of Tang and Xu Ji (徐積) of Song, and conveys the purport that although Yi Jeong-gan's age had already passed 70 and his mother had passed 90, mother and son took delight as in the story of Lao Laizi (老萊子).17 This entry does not mention the writing of the eight characters or a bestowal of royal calligraphy. The facts confirmed in this entry are three — (1) special promotion (special appointment to senior second rank), (2) bestowal of the staff and armrest, and (3) the royal edict commending filial conduct — and what is not confirmed is the bestowal of royal calligraphy.
B. The Memorial of Thanks of the 3rd Day of the 5th Month of the 14th Year of Sejong (Lunar Calendar) in the Sejong sillok
The memorial of thanks submitted by Yi Jeong-gan on the 3rd day of the 5th month of the same year (lunar calendar) carries his gratitude for the repeated offices and for the bestowal of the staff and armrest and the backrest, but no mention of royal calligraphy is confirmed.18 In that for a subject to receive the king's own handwriting is an extremely glorious thing and it would be natural for it to be mentioned in a text of thanks, this silence is a circumstance worthy of note. However, 'not being in the record' is not in itself proof that 'there was no bestowal,' and this remains as the limit of the argument from silence (argumentum ex silentio) in source criticism.
C. The Gyeongsujip (慶壽集, Collection Celebrating Longevity) — Fixing of the Publication History and Confirmation of the Wording of the Congratulatory Poems (賀詩)
It had been handed down that the Gyeongsujip, which gathers the poetry and prose in which the state councillors of the day sang of the happy occasion of Yi Jeong-gan and his mother, contained a poem by Yu Gwan (柳寬) and a preface by Jo Mal-saeng (趙末生)19; its publication history was fixed by the publication preface of the Korean-translation edition (1990) reproduced on pp. 559–560 of the Cheonnyeonsa (Thousand-Year History).20 The original collection is what Yi Jeong-gan in his lifetime made into a volume from the 29 poems of praise of the longevity banquet for his mother's birthday on the 19th day of the 12th month of the 9th year of Sejong (1427; lunar calendar) and the 57 poems of praise of the banquet honoring his parent in the 14th year of Sejong (1432); it was first printed in the 4th year of Jungjong (1509) by his great-great-grandson Yi Gye-bok (李繼福), Lord Jeonpyeong; reprinted in the 8th year of Sukjong (1682) by the descendant in the female line Jeong Si-seong (鄭始成) and the eighth-generation collateral descendant Yi Man-bong (李萬封); printed a third time in 1918 by the seventeenth-generation descendant Yi Hak-ro (李學魯), the eighteenth-generation descendant Yi Neung-se (李能世), and others; and printed a fourth time, in Korean translation, in 1990. The publication preface states that in the course of the three printings "the letter of commendation (褒書) of Sejong and the account of conduct (行狀) of the lord were additionally recorded (追錄) at the front and back," but that already at the time of the first printing 40 of the 57 banquet poems had been lost, and at the third printing a part was supplemented with writings by descendants. That is, the extant Gyeongsujip has an interval of 77 years between its formation (around 1432) and its first printing (1509), and is a document of composite layers in which additions and supplements were made across the editions; therefore, when the poetry and prose it contains are used as contemporary sources, criticism of the editions must come first.
On confirming the wording of the congratulatory poems reproduced on pp. 561–563 of the Cheonnyeonsa — works by Gwon Hong (權弘), Maeng Sa-seong (孟思誠), Hwang Hui (黃喜), and Yu Gwan (柳寬) — the favors of 1432, such as the edict (Hwang Hui: "紫泥半濕花牋至," an edict on which the king's seal ink is half wet), the dove staff (鳩杖) and the black-stone (烏石) backrest, and the palace wine (宮醞) and music, are sung of concretely, but in none of the congratulatory poems within the confirmed range is a bestowal of the writing of the eight characters mentioned.21 This must be read within the limits of the argument from silence, and confirmation of the whole of the congratulatory poems (of the 86, excluding the lost portion) is needed, but in light of the genre convention of the congratulatory poem, in which the eminent lords and ministers of the day competitively enumerate the particulars of the favors, it is a circumstance worthy of note.
D. The Spirit-Path Stele (1456) — Acquisition of the Full Classical Chinese Text and Corroboration of the Absence of the Eight Characters
That the spirit-path stele of Yi Jeong-gan erected in 1456 (Sejo 2) has no content on a bestowal of royal calligraphy had previously been conveyed only by press report22, and in the 6th revision the passage on Sejong's commendation was confirmed by the excerpt quoted on p. 570 of the Cheonnyeonsa.23 In the 7th revision, the full Classical Chinese text of the “Hyojeonggong hwi Jeong-gan sindobimyeong byeongseo (孝靖公諱貞幹神道碑銘幷序)” [Spirit-Path Stele Inscription, with Preface, of Lord Hyojeong, personal name Jeong-gan] contained on pp. 860–861 of the Documentary Records in Part 7 of the Cheonnyeonsa, and the Korean translation on pp. 861–864, were obtained, and the entire range of preface (序), lineage account, and inscription (銘) was read.24 The inscription was composed by his grandson Yi Seo-jang (李恕長, Lord Jeonseong) in Byeongja, the 7th year of Jingtai (1456), and the wording of the passage on Sejong's commendation agrees with the excerpt on p. 570.
早懸車, 退去于西原之松泉別墅, 左右親側, 怡怡愉愉, 弄雀雛供懽, 世謂 老萊之戲復覩于公云。世宗聞其孝純篤, 特降褒書, 超陞其官秩是上卿, 仍賜 几杖·酒樂以寵之。 (punctuation by the author)
He gave up office early and withdrew to the Songcheon villa in Seowon (西原, present-day Cheongju), where he attended at his parent's side gladly and cheerfully, and gave her joy by such things as playing with sparrow chicks, so that the world said it saw the play of Lao Laizi again in the lord. King Sejong, hearing that his filial devotion was pure and earnest, specially sent down a letter of commendation (褒書), raised his official rank by a leap and made him a high minister (上卿), and further bestowed a staff and armrest and wine and music to show him favor. (translation by the author)
As a result of reading the full text, the inscription, in the passage on Sejong's commendation, cites the letter of commendation (褒書, the edict), the promotion by leap (超陞), the staff and armrest, and the wine and music; it then goes on to the fact that on the 2nd day of the 4th month of Gabin of Xuande (1434; lunar calendar) his mother was specially granted the additional title of Jeongdaebuin, to the statement that “at that time her age was 102 and the lord's age was also eighty-odd (時年一百有二, 公年八十餘),” and to the statement that the worthy scholar-officials of the day vied in composing poems and songs; and the inscription (銘) at the end likewise only sings that “he bestowed music and bestowed the armrest; glory was handed down to ten thousand generations, and the whole country spoke of his filial piety. He highly commended outstanding conduct and forever aided moral edification (賜樂賜几, 萬世垂榮, 一國稱孝, 崇褒卓行, 永補風敎).” It has been corroborated that nowhere in the entire range of preface, lineage, and inscription is there any mention corresponding to the eight characters, royal calligraphy, or hand-writing. The silence of the spirit-path stele, which had previously stopped at confirmation by excerpt, has hereby been raised to confirmation at the level of the full text. In that, if the bestowal of royal calligraphy is a fact, this inscription, which enumerates in detail the particulars of the favors, is the most natural place for it to be recorded, this silence is a decisive circumstance consistent with the silence of the Veritable Records and of the memorial of thanks.
E. The “Tomb Marker of Lady Kim, Jeongdaebuin” (1445) — An Addition to the Fifteenth-Century Sources
P. 860 of Part 7 of the Cheonnyeonsa contains the original text and translation of the tomb marker of Lady Kim of Nagan, the mother of Yi Jeong-gan.25 The tomb marker was composed in the 2nd month of Eulchuk, the 10th year of Zhengtong (1445; lunar calendar), by her son Yi Yang-gan (李良幹), Vice Director of the Naeseomsi; it says that the lady was born in Imo of Zhizheng (1342) and departed this world on the 30th day of the 12th month of Sinyu of Zhengtong (1441; lunar calendar), and praises her: “The lady's natural endowment was pure and beautiful, and her disposition was deep and sincere. The lord (her husband Yi Gu-jik) departed this world first, and during the 50 years she lived as a widow her descendants filled the gate and all became officials (搢紳); as she taught them with propriety and cherished them with love, the norms of her household became what the world admired.” That is, even in a contemporary document of 1445 that squarely extols the household norms (家範) of this family, no mention of the eight characters or of royal calligraphy is confirmed. Meanwhile, a note by the Korean translator of the Cheonnyeonsa points out that the tomb-tablet inscription of Lord Jeonseo (composed by the same Yi Yang-gan) gives the lady's span of life as 102 and this tomb marker gives it differently as 100, and judged that 100 is correct by the standard of her year of birth; the “時年一百有二” of the spirit-path stele (1456), too, stands in the lineage of this numerical discrepancy.
F. The Obituary Notice of the 27th Day of the 9th Month of the 21st Year of Sejong (1439; Lunar Calendar) in the Sejong sillok
The contemporary officially compiled record of the phase of Yi Jeong-gan's death is the obituary notice of the 27th day of the 9th month of the 21st year of Sejong (lunar calendar) in the Sejong sillok.26 The obituary notice relates that he died of illness at the age of 80, and that when the news of his death became known the king sent condolences and consolation according to the rites and gave him the posthumous name Hyojeong (孝靖), and it looks back on the special promotion, the staff and armrest, and the commendation by edict of 1432. No record of a personal royal visit to his sickbed at the time of his death or of a bestowal of the eight characters is confirmed. This entry becomes the contemporary reference point for verifying the account of a deathbed bestowal to be seen later (Chapter Ⅲ, section 6).
G. Interim Conclusion
In the contemporary and near-contemporary sources of the fifteenth century — the three entries of the Veritable Records (the edict and the memorial of thanks of 1432, the obituary notice of 1439), the “Tomb Marker of Lady Kim, Jeongdaebuin” (1445), the full Classical Chinese text of the spirit-path stele inscription (1456; entire range read in the 7th revision), and the congratulatory poems of the Gyeongsujip within the confirmed range — a record concerning royal calligraphy of the eight characters is not confirmed to date. What is confirmed is the fact itself of Sejong's exceptional commendation and the bestowal of the staff and armrest.
2. The Source Conditions of the Seungjeongwon ilgi (承政院日記, Diaries of the Royal Secretariat) — A Structural Gap
The Seungjeongwon ilgi is understood to have been kept from the reign of Sejong, but the diaries before Seonjo were lost in the Imjin War (1592) and the diaries up to the beginning of Injo's reign in the rebellion of Yi Gwal (1624); in the fire at the Royal Secretariat in 1744 (Yeongjo 20) the diaries from after the Imjin War to 1721 (Gyeongjong 1) were lost again, and in 1746 they were recompiled at the Diary Office on the basis of the court gazette (朝報), registers (謄錄), and the like. As a result, the extant Seungjeongwon ilgi is the portion from 1623 (Injo 1) onward, and within that it has a difference of layers in that the portion from 1722 (Gyeongjong 2) onward is the original that escaped the fire, while the portion for 1623–1721 is a later recompiled text.27
This history of loss has a decisive implication for the present subject. Since the Seungjeongwon ilgi of Sejong's reign is not extant, the very existence or not of a contemporary Seungjeongwon ilgi record concerning the bestowal of royal calligraphy cannot be verified, and the relevant entries that appear in the Seungjeongwon ilgi of the late Joseon period cannot structurally but have the character of later records. In addition, in that 1722 (Gyeongjong 2) is the span in which the original diaries that escaped the fire of 1744 begin, it is a period in which the source layer is relatively stable.
A. The Seungjeongwon ilgi Entry for the 18th Day of the 7th Month of the 2nd Year of Gyeongjong (1722; Lunar Calendar) — The First Confirmation of a Statement of 'Royal Calligraphy' in an Officially Compiled Record
This research confirmed the original text of the entry for the 18th day of the 7th month of the 2nd year of Gyeongjong (lunar calendar) in fascicle 542 (fascicle 29 of the transcribed edition) of the Seungjeongwon ilgi. On this day Bak Su-ham (朴守諴), a Confucian student of Cheongju in Chungcheong Province, and others submitted a memorial requesting a royal charter for the shrine of the seven worthies Gim Sa-ryeom (金士廉), Choe Yu-gyeong (崔有慶), Yi Jeong-gan, Bak Gwang-u (朴光佑), Yi Ji-chung (李之沖), Jo Gang (趙綱), and Yi Dae-geon (李大建), and the additional enshrinement of Yi Je-sin (李濟臣), Choe Seok-jeong (崔錫鼎), and Yi In-hyeok (李寅爀); within it the passage relating to Yi Jeong-gan is as follows.28
李貞幹, 自幼有至性, 其父早死, 事母極孝, 老而不衰, 嘗慕老萊子斑衣娛親之意, 爲嬰兒戲, 以悅母志, 世宗聞而嘉之, 擢拜中樞院使, 遂以御筆, 書家傳忠孝世守仁敬八大字, 以褒之。又令賜宴壽親, 州人至今艶稱之。
Yi Jeong-gan had from childhood a nature of utmost devotion. When his father departed this world early, he served his mother with extreme filial piety, unchanged even in old age; having long admired the intent of Lao Laizi (老萊子) in delighting his parents in many-colored clothes, he played as a small child and so gladdened his mother's heart. King Sejong heard of this and thought it praiseworthy, and selected and appointed him Commissioner of the Central Council; at last, in the king's own hand (御筆), he wrote the eight large characters 'Gajeon chunghyo, sesu ingyeong' and thereby commended him. He also had a banquet bestowed to celebrate his mother's long life, and the people of the district to this day speak of it with admiration. (translation by the author)
The king's rescript on this entry was "I have examined the memorial and understood it well; as to the content of the memorial, let the State Council and the office concerned deliberate and report," and the memorial was sent down to the Ministry of Rites.29
B. Determination of the Source Character of This Entry
First, this entry is the first case confirmed to date in which the term 'royal calligraphy (御筆)' and the full text of the eight characters appear in an officially compiled document. This precedes the Gapsul edition (1754) by 32 years, and establishes that the tradition of royal calligraphy had, by 1722 at the latest, been conveyed up to the court as a public statement at the level of the Confucian literati. Second, however, its nature is not an independent confirmation by the state. This passage is part of a memorial by Confucian students petitioning for a royal charter, and the memorial itself, saying "the people of the district to this day speak of it with admiration (州人至今艶稱之)," states explicitly that it is a local tradition. That is, this record in the Seungjeongwon ilgi is the entry into the record of a citation of an existing tradition, not an independent ground for the fact of a bestowal of royal calligraphy. The rescript, too, did not confirm whether the content of the memorial was fact, but is an ordinary instruction to deliberate and report. Third, a point of note in the wording is that in this memorial's account of Yi Jeong-gan the bestowal of the staff and armrest, which the Veritable Records confirm, is not mentioned, and royal calligraphy and the bestowal of a banquet (賜宴) are placed at the center of the narrative. This shift of focus, in which the facts confirmed by the contemporary officially compiled sources (staff and armrest, edict) and the element emphasized by later tradition (royal calligraphy) have changed places, shows that in the Confucian-literati society of the early eighteenth century the tradition of royal calligraphy had already taken its place as the core narrative of the honoring of Yi Jeong-gan. Fourth, this memorial also requests the additional enshrinement of Yi Je-sin, the writer of the “Samjoseol” of the Mallyeok edition, suggesting the continuity of the clan and Confucian-literati network that carried the tradition of royal calligraphy. In the memorial Yi Je-sin is honored for the good government he dispensed on being posted as magistrate to this district (Cheongju) in the reign of Seonjo ("來莅是土, 多施仁惠") and for his military merit as Army Commander of the Northern Region, and it is reported that the additional enshrinement was in fact carried out the following year, 1723 (Gyeongjong 3).30
C. The Chronological Discrepancy in the History of the Shrine — Application of the Principle of Priority of the Original Source
This memorial states of itself that the founding of the shrine was a matter of "丙戌間" (presumed to be 1706), and states explicitly that as of 1722 "it has not yet received the grant of a royal name plaque (尙未蒙恩額之頒)." This conflicts head-on with the description of the bibliographical-note literature, namely foundation in 1695 (Sukjong 21) and royal charter in 1711.31 When a primary source (the self-statement in the memorial of the parties themselves) collides with a secondary bibliographical note, the proper order is to give priority to the original source while confirming the sources of the note (town gazetteers, academy gazetteers, and the like) and ascertaining the cause of the discrepancy. Whether and when the royal charter was actually carried out is a follow-up task to be settled by tracing in the Seungjeongwon ilgi and the Veritable Records the entries on the subsequent handling of this memorial by the Ministry of Rites. The 'foundation in 1695, royal charter in 1711' cited elsewhere in this paper is treated as provisional until this discrepancy is resolved.
D. The Seungjeongwon ilgi Entry for the 3rd Day of the 4th Month of the 49th Year of Yeongjo (1773; Lunar Calendar) — Bestowal of a Staff and Armrest on the Descendant Yi Jing-seong
This is the second relevant entry confirmed as a result of the search. On this day Yeongjo summoned and received in audience the former Commander of the Five Guards Yi Jing-seong (李徵聖), together with Eo Pil-myeong (魚必溟), and bestowed a staff and armrest; the entry records Yi Jing-seong as "a tenth-generation descendant of Yi Jeong-gan, who was also included among the minor merit subjects in the Musin year (1728), and whose age is now eighty-three while his strength is still robust," and had the ministry concerned appoint him, by single-candidate nomination (單付), to a supernumerary post of Second Minister of the Office of Ministers-without-Portfolio.32 The implications of this entry are three. First, that 341 years after Sejong bestowed a staff and armrest on Yi Jeong-gan the court again honored his tenth-generation descendant with a staff and armrest, and that the recording secretary expressly recorded that he was 'a tenth-generation descendant of Yi Jeong-gan,' shows that the precedent of Yi Jeong-gan was a reference still recognized at court in the late eighteenth century. Second, the content of the memory recalled on this occasion is the staff and armrest, not royal calligraphy. Nowhere in this entry is royal calligraphy mentioned. This must be read cautiously within the limits of the argument from silence, but it is consistent with this paper's distinction of layers, namely that at least the official narrative at the level of the court was maintained around the fact confirmed by the Veritable Records (the staff and armrest), and that royal calligraphy remained in the layer of Confucian-literati and clan tradition. Third, Yi Jing-seong shares the generation character 'Jing (徵)' with Yi Jing-guk (李徵國), the author of the postface of the Gapsul edition, and is a contemporary of the generation that compiled the Gapsul edition (1754). The fact that the clan's making official of the tradition of royal calligraphy (1754) and the court's honoring centered on the staff and armrest (1773) coexisted in the same generation is an interesting parallel showing that the two layers were distinct while not excluding each other.
E. Exhaustive Assessment of the Search Results for '李貞幹'
The entries confirmed in the Seungjeongwon ilgi database with the search term '李貞幹' total 6, and as a result of assessment only the two above (1722, 1773) relate to the present subject. The rest are a memorial unrelated to Yi Jeong-gan (1730), rosters of Confucian students that include a namesake written with the variant character, 李貞榦 (2 entries of 1736), and a roster that includes a namesake (1782).33 The detailed assessment table is contained in Appendix 5. With this, as far as this search term is concerned the exhaustive search has been completed, and the judgment that 'in the Seungjeongwon ilgi after Sejong's reign no independent record relating to Yi Jeong-gan is confirmed, and of the two entries that are confirmed the only one that mentions royal calligraphy is the citation in the Confucian literati's memorial' has become not a proof of absence but a statement based on exhaustive confirmation. However, since there may be entries not captured by a search on the personal name alone (the carrying out of the royal charter, entries referring to him only by the academy name or the posthumous name, and the like), additional searching by auxiliary search terms such as '松泉,' '賜額,' and '孝靖' is the remaining task.
3. The Lineage of the Genealogy Editions and the Layers of the Records
A. The Seonghwa Draft Genealogy (1476)
As the first genealogical record of the Jeonui Yi clan, the so-called Seonghwa draft genealogy drawn up in 1476 (Seongjong 7) by Yi Ha (李賀) is confirmed, but it was not published, being in the form of a draft genealogy (草譜), and since the original is not transmitted its exact content cannot be known.34 Accordingly, to confirm from this edition whether the eight characters were included is at present impossible. Meanwhile, according to the clan's own summary, after the Seonghwa genealogy the Jeonui genealogy and the Yean genealogy were each compiled 4 times and the comprehensive genealogy 4 times, and the Gyeongo edition is said to run to 9 volumes and some 5,000 pages35, so that an actual survey of the lineage of editions can take this baseline information from the clan as its starting point.
B. The Mallyeok edition (1574) and Lord Cheonggang's handwriting — the earliest confirmed record of the attribution to King Sejong (provisional)
According to press reports, the earliest record in which the eight characters are introduced as the writing of King Sejong is the "Samjoseol" (三條說, "Three Articles"), which Yi Je-sin (李濟臣, 1536~1583; 1584 in some sources), a descendant of Yi Jeong-gan, wrote at the head of the volume when he compiled the Mallyeok edition in 1574 (Seonjo 7); it is said to contain a statement to the effect that 'King Sejong the Great wrote them by his own hand (手書).'36 However, the corresponding phrase in the Classical Chinese original of the postface to the Gapsul edition (1754) obtained for this study (discussed below) is "考淸江公述卷首三條說後所手書者", that is, 'if one examines what Lord Cheonggang wrote by his own hand after he composed the Samjoseol at the head of the volume'; it is therefore highly possible that what the postface took as its source was not the body of the Samjoseol but Lord Cheonggang's handwriting appended after the Samjoseol.37 On either reading, if this is true, it is a record made about 142 years after the event (1432), and, as a clan record (Grade 3) whose time of composition is confirmed, it becomes the earliest confirmed point of the tradition attributing the royal calligraphy. However, since this study has not been able to inspect the original of the Mallyeok edition, this statement is a provisional confirmation premised on collation with the original. Confirming whether the original of the Mallyeok edition or a transcript of it survives and where it is held, and confirming the distinction between the body of the Samjoseol and the handwriting that follows it, was the highest-priority follow-up task of this research (reset as below in the 12th revision).
In the 12th revision, the information on the compilation of the Mallyeok edition was supplemented by a clan chronology document (Jeonui Yi Clan Bujeonggong Branch Association, "Record of Genealogy Publications," hereafter the 'Bujeonggong branch chronology'). According to it, the Mallyeok edition was the first joint genealogy of the Daesaseonggong branch and the Jeonseogong branch, produced under the direction of Lord Jeongsuk, Tak (鐸), his son Lord Yakpo, Hae-su (海壽), and Lord Cheonggang, Je-sin (濟臣), with the cooperation of the descendant through a daughter's line, An Ro (安璐); it was titled Jeonui Yi-ssi seongbo (全義李氏姓譜, Genealogy of the Jeonui Yi Clan) and published as a woodblock edition in a single volume, but it is said to be no longer extant (現無傳). Two points update the account given in the paper. First, the compilation of the Mallyeok edition was not the work of Yi Je-sin alone but an undertaking jointly directed by three persons. Second, since the clan's own record that the original has not been transmitted has been confirmed, the search for the physical original is in effect a closed path, and verification is reset to the following indirect paths: ⑴ confirming the text of the Preface to the Old Mallyeok Genealogy (by Yi Hae-su) and the Postface to the Old Mallyeok Genealogy (by An Ro) reproduced in the opening volume of the Gapsul edition (1754) (possible through the original-text images of the Jangseogak copy, discussed below); ⑵ confirming whether the Samjoseol or a corresponding text is included in Yi Je-sin's collected works, Cheonggang jip (淸江集, Collected Works of Cheonggang); and ⑶ confirming whether there is text related to the Samjoseol in the vicinity of the "Cheonggang-gong yeo An Ro seo" (淸江公與安璐書, Lord Cheonggang's Letter to An Ro) and the "Cheonggang-gong jason boseo ryak" (Abridged Preface to the Genealogy of Lord Cheonggang's Descendants) in the opening volume of the Gapsul edition. Meanwhile, there is a slight discrepancy in the dating. The Bujeonggong branch chronology states that the Mallyeok edition was published in the gapsul year of Seonjo (1574), but the prefaces and postfaces of the old genealogies in the opening volume of the Jangseogak copy of the Gapsul edition are entered in the bibliographic description as Mallyeok eulhae (1575, preface by Yi Hae-su) and Mallyeok 3 (1575, postface by An Ro). The two can be reconciled as compilation in 1574 and prefaces, postfaces and publication in 1575, but until the original text is confirmed, both dates are given side by side and judgment is reserved.
In the 14th revision, one more text relating to the Mallyeok edition was added. In the attachment to the "Demand for Explanation" (2023, page 14 of the copy --- for the detailed analysis see Chapter Ⅷ, Section 2 of the full edition; publication withheld in the Public Edition) that Yi Jong-gwan sent to Yi Yong-ho, a Classical Chinese passage from the postface to the Mallyeok edition is quoted as follows: "一帙凡撰 次皆禀裁于相公 首冠家訓尊世守也 只錄子姓重宗緖也". Of this, "首冠家訓尊世也" (to the effect that the family precepts were placed at the head of the volume --- on page 13 of the same document it is also deciphered as "首冠家訓 專世守也", so that the reading of the character form diverges between 尊 and 專) is the testimony of the postface itself that the family precepts were carried at the head of the Mallyeok edition, and it independently agrees with the testimony of the postface to the Gapsul edition (1754) that they were 'printed at the head of the old genealogy.' According to the same document, a photocopy of the Mallyeok edition was in fact handed down by the late Gi-jong (基宗), but it is difficult to decipher; Yi Yong-ho claims that the family precepts were not entered in that photocopy, while Yi Jong-gwan, citing the text of the postface, claims that they were entered. That is, it has been confirmed by document that whether the family precepts were entered at the head of the Mallyeok edition is itself an issue disputed within the clan. The judgment of this study: the text of the postface is documentary evidence in the direction of supporting the entry, but since it stands at the stage of a quotation of a quotation, the original text needs to be established by a three-way collation of the photocopy handed down by Gi-jong, the copy in the attachment to the petition, and the portion reproduced in the opening volume of the Jangseogak copy of the Gapsul edition. The problem of the 尊/專 reading will also be resolved by the same collation.
In the 15th revision, most of the above task was resolved. Attachment <2> to Yi Yong-ho's petition was obtained in photographic form; it is a copy of the full text of the postface to the Mallyeok edition (「萬曆譜跋」) made from Volume 1 of the Jeonui-Yean Yi-ssi seongbo (Genealogy of the Jeonui-Yean Yi Clan) (the version reproduced in the opening volume of a later genealogy). With the full text of the postface obtained, the following are established. ⑴ Establishment of the reading: the original text of the disputed passage is "凡撰次皆禀裁于相公 首冠家訓尊世守也 只錄子姓重宗緖也", and the variant reading 尊/專 is settled as 尊. The sense is: "In general, the compilation and ordering (撰次) were all submitted to His Excellency the Minister (Lord Jeongsuk, Tak) and received his approval; that the family precepts were placed at the very head was to honor what is kept through the generations (世守), and that only descendants of the surname were recorded was to give weight to the main line of descent (宗緖)." That the two characters 世守 appear directly in the postface is noteworthy for its textual connection with the second half of the eight characters (世守仁敬). Strictly distinguished, however, what the postface directly establishes is the entry of the family precepts at the head of the volume and their author; whether the wording of those family precepts was identical with the present eight characters (家傳忠孝 世守仁敬) is not directly established, because the postface does not quote the text of the family precepts. The probability that it was the eight characters is rated high on account of the testimony of the postface to the Gapsul edition (1754) to "the eight characters at the head of the old genealogy," the wording "八字" in the Seowon haengnok, and the consistency with the term 世守 in this postface; but until the physical head of the Mallyeok edition (or a photograph of it) is confirmed, this proposition of identity remains at the [presumed] tier. ⑵ Establishment of the attribution of authorship: "若家訓等條則持平所述云" at the end of the postface (the articles such as the family precepts are said to have been composed by the Jipyeong) identifies the author of the family-precept articles as the Jipyeong --- Yi Je-sin, who is specified as "持平濟臣" at the beginning of the postface. This agrees exactly, across an interval of 179 years, with "淸江公述卷首三條說", which the postface to the Gapsul edition (1754) took as its source, and the existence of family-precept articles at the head of the Mallyeok edition and their author (Yi Je-sin) are established by the testimony of the postface itself. ⑶ Establishment of the structure of compilation: by "余以太師彌孫辱承領相公隆委 與子姓持平濟臣幼學文琦 叅證諸譜 彙爲一帙", the structure of joint compilation, in which Yi Je-sin (Jipyeong) and Yi Mun-gi (Yuhak) collated the evidence under the commission of Lord Jeongsuk, Tak (領相公), and the descendant through a daughter's line, An Ro, wrote the postface, is confirmed from the original text, and it agrees with the account in the Bujeonggong branch chronology. The signature of the postface is "萬曆三年三月下澣 十七代彌孫 順興 安璐 謹跋" (the last ten days of the 3rd month of 1575, lunar calendar), so that the chronological reconciliation of compilation in 1574 and postface in 1575 is also established.
With this, a grammatical examination of Yi Yong-ho's Korean translation --- "Because the sugwan gahun did not attain to the worship of the ancestors generation after generation, all of it was submitted to His Excellency for his decision and rejected from the compilation" --- has become possible. The judgment of this study is as follows. First, 撰次 is an idiomatic compound meaning 'to compile and put in order,' and a reading that detaches 次 as an independent verb ('to fail to advance; to hesitate') does not fit the syntax of "凡撰次皆禀裁于相公". Second, "首冠家訓尊世守也 / 只錄子姓重宗緖也" is a complete parallel couplet of [act] + [purport] 也, and to render the latter line as 'recorded' while rendering only the former line as 'rejected' breaks the parallel structure (Yi Yong-ho's own Korean translation also renders the latter line as inclusion). Third, if the family precepts had been excluded from the compilation, the postface would have had no reason to go out of its way to state the author of the family-precept articles by saying "若家訓等條則持平所述云" --- this passage presupposes the inclusion of the family-precept articles. Accordingly, the entry of the family precepts at the head of the Mallyeok edition is supported by the text of the postface, and the reading of exclusion is difficult to sustain. However, since this attachment copy is itself a reproduction in a later genealogy, confirming the fidelity of the reproduction (collation with the portion reproduced in the opening volume of the Jangseogak copy of the Gapsul edition) still remains as the final procedure of establishment. In addition, from page 43 of which publication (arranged as "Part 1: The Goryeo Period") the photograph of the physical Mallyeok edition (the first leaf of the preface of the photocopy provided by Gi-jong, with the appended caption "the first printed genealogy of the Jeonui Yi clan") was copied is not confirmed to date. That it is neither the Jeonui Yean Yi-ssi cheonnyeonsa (Thousand-Year History of the Jeonui-Yean Yi Clan) nor the Jeonuiin ui yeoksa wa bit (The History and Light of the Jeonui People) (2011) has been confirmed by collation with the physical books, and the remaining candidates are the Jeonui Yi-ssi cheonnyeongo (A Thousand-Year Study of the Jeonui Yi Clan) (a book which tradition holds was published by the Daesaseonggong Branch Association) and the Jeonui-Yean Yi-ssi Hwasuhoe baengnyeonsa (Hundred-Year History of the Jeonui-Yean Yi Clan Association) (2022), among others. Once the place of inclusion is established, a high-resolution re-reading of the page in question becomes the path for confirming the text of the preface.
C. The Sungjeong edition (崇禎譜, 1634)
The existence of the Sungjeong edition published in 1634 is confirmed38, but the manner in which the eight characters are carried in it and the presence or absence of related prefaces and postfaces were not confirmed in this investigation. Since it is the edition by which the continuity of transmission between the Mallyeok edition and the Gapsul edition can be verified, confirmation of the original is necessary.
The Bujeonggong branch chronology transmits the following concerning the Sungjeong edition. It was the second joint genealogy of the Daesaseonggong branch and the Jeonseogong branch, produced under the direction of the brothers Lord Chijae, Gu-jun (耉俊), and Lord Jamwa, Myeong-jun (命俊), and of the Magistrate of Yeongcheon, Hu-gi (厚基); it was titled Jeonui Yi-ssi seongbo and published as a woodblock edition in two volumes in all; and, according to Yi Hu-gi's postface, six years after the completion of the manuscript he took up his post as Magistrate of Yeongcheon, and in the following year, the gapsul year of Injo (1634), it was cut on blocks and published. In particular, this document describes the Sungjeong edition as 'the oldest extant edition (最古本) and extremely rare.' That is, unlike the Mallyeok edition, a clan record that a physical copy of the Sungjeong edition survives somewhere has been confirmed, and with this, confirming the whereabouts of a physical copy of the Sungjeong edition is raised to the highest-priority task of the physical survey of editions. The paths of inquiry are, in order, catalog searches of institutions holding old documents such as Jangseogak, Kyujanggak, and the National Library of Korea; institutions connected with Yi Hu-gi's place of office (Yeongcheon); and the old genealogies kept by each branch association of the clan. There are two matters to be confirmed: whether the eight characters are printed at the head of the volume (the identification of the 'old genealogy' of the postface to the Gapsul edition), and whether the prefaces and postfaces contain any mention of the eight characters, the handwriting, or King Sejong (the continuity of transmission over the 180 years between the Mallyeok edition and the Gapsul edition).
D. The Gapsul edition (1754) and Yi Jing-guk's postface — obtaining the original text and a close reading
The postface written by Yi Jing-guk (李徵國) at the time of the recompilation of the Gapsul edition in 1754 (Yeongjo 30) is the most important internal testimony on this question. This study obtained the Classical Chinese original of the postface from a clan transcript. In addition, in the 12th revision it was confirmed that an edition judged to be a physical copy of the Yeongjo Gapsul edition --- Jeonui Yi-ssi jokbo (Genealogy of the Jeonui Yi Clan), wooden movable-type edition, 10 volumes in 10 fascicles, call number K2-1782, compiled by Yi Deok-yong (李德容) and others, formerly held by the Jeoksangsan History Archive in Muju and donated by the Government-General of Korea --- is held at the Jangseogak of the Academy of Korean Studies, and that the original-text images of all 10 fascicles are open to the public at the Digital Jangseogak. Since the compiler Yi Deok-yong agrees with the directors of the Gapsul edition transmitted by the Bujeonggong branch chronology (Jing-guk and his son, Magistrate Deok-yong), the identification of the edition is cross-confirmed by the clan record. However, as regards the type, the Bujeonggong branch chronology says it is a metal movable-type edition in 10 volumes in all, while the Jangseogak bibliography says it is a wooden movable-type edition, and the two disagree; this point is therefore noted side by side as a matter to be decided by bibliographic examination of the physical copy. According to the Jangseogak bibliographic description, the eight characters '家傳忠孝世守仁敬' are stamped on the first page of each fascicle of this edition (the fourth page in the first fascicle), and the opening volume reproduces the prefaces and postfaces of the old Mallyeok and Sungjeong genealogies, the "Hyojeong-gong Songcheon Seowon haengnok" (孝靖公松泉書院行錄, Record of Conduct of Lord Hyojeong at Songcheon Academy), the "Cheonggang-gong yeo An Ro seo," and other texts, so that the collation of the physical postface, the physical survey of the copy printed at the head of the volume, and the confirmation of the text of the Haengnok, which this study left as follow-up tasks, can all be carried out through the original-text images of this one edition. The collation of the original text in this section will be updated as soon as the collation with the images of the Jangseogak copy is completed (at the present stage, the notation is kept on the basis of the transcript).39 The collated original text and the author's translation are as follows (for matters of collation and annotation, see the footnotes).40
右家傳忠孝世守仁敬八字, 刊行於舊譜卷首, 曾不標書其筆蹟之所自來矣。今番譜牒重修時, 得見孝靖公松泉書院行錄, 則有世宗大王手書賜家傳忠孝世守仁敬八字之語, 乃知此八字是孝靖公之得受於聖朝, 以忠孝仁敬爲家傳世守之訓也。且考淸江公述卷首三條說後所手書者, 則尤可知其爲世廟之有特賜也。依舊本重模, 印揭于譜牒首張, 以爲同譜人開卷即見, 世世遵奉服膺之地。英祖甲戌修譜時徵國所述。
The above eight characters, "Gajeon chunghyo, sesu ingyeong" (loyalty and filial piety handed down in the family; benevolence and reverence kept through the generations), have been printed at the head of the old genealogy, but it was never stated in writing where that handwriting came from. At the time of the present recompilation of the genealogy, I obtained and saw the Record of Conduct of Lord Hyojeong at Songcheon Academy, in which there are the words 'King Sejong the Great wrote by his own hand (手書) and bestowed the eight characters Gajeon chunghyo, sesu ingyeong,' and only then did I know that these eight characters are the teaching that Lord Hyojeong received from the sagely court (聖朝), to hand down loyalty, filial piety, benevolence, and reverence in the family and keep them through the generations. Further, if one examines what Lord Cheonggang wrote by his own hand after he composed the Samjoseol at the head of the volume, one can know all the more that they were a special bestowal (特賜) by Semyo (世廟, from the context King Sejong). They are copied again in accordance with the old version and printed and displayed on the first leaf of the genealogy, so that those who share this genealogy may see them as soon as they open the book and may take them as the ground for honoring and upholding them and engraving them on their hearts generation after generation. Composed by Jing-guk at the time of the compilation of the genealogy in the gapsul year of Yeongjo. (Author's translation)
Three tiers are separated out in this postface. First, that the eight characters themselves were already printed at the head of the 'old genealogy' before the Gapsul edition (曾不標書其筆蹟之所自來 — without any notation of the origin of the handwriting). Second, that the attribution to King Sejong was judged and put into explicit writing at the stage of the Gapsul edition, on the basis of separate documents, namely the Haengnok and Lord Cheonggang's handwriting. Third, that the postface itself states explicitly that the version displayed at the head of the volume is a copy (重模) of the old version. In other words, the compiler of 1754 himself is in effect testifying that 'the existence of the eight characters' and 'the attribution to King Sejong' have separate sources, and that the displayed version is not the original but a copy. Whether the 'old genealogy' here is the Mallyeok edition, the Sungjeong edition, or an edition earlier than these is not confirmed to date.
There are two facts newly confirmed by obtaining the original text. First, the word 'royal calligraphy (御筆)' does not occur in the original text of the postface. The quotation from the Haengnok is expressed as '手書賜', Lord Cheonggang's as '手書', and King Sejong's act as '特賜'; the 'royal calligraphy' in "one can know that it is royal calligraphy," seen in the clan's Korean translation and in press quotations, is a supplement made at the stage of translation. Accordingly, within the range in which the original text is confirmed, the 1722 memorial in the Seungjeongwon ilgi (承政院日記, Diaries of the Royal Secretariat) is the only premodern instance of the term '御筆', and the tier of terminology of the postface to the Gapsul edition stays at handwriting (手書) and special bestowal (特賜). Second, the relevant text of the Seowon haengnok (Academy Record of Conduct) was for the first time confirmed concretely through the medium of the quotation in the postface. The passage of the Haengnok transmitted by the postface is "世宗大王手書賜家傳忠孝世守仁敬八字", and it is indirectly confirmed that the Haengnok too used not 'royal calligraphy' but '手書'. Of course, since this is an indirect confirmation through the postface, it cannot replace a physical examination of the original text of the Haengnok.
4. Songcheon Academy and the Seowon haengnok — obtaining the full Classical Chinese text of the Haengnok and corroborating the chain of sources
A. The history of the academy and the persons enshrined
Songcheon Academy is an academy that was established in Cheongju and enshrined seven persons, including Kim Sa-ryeom, Choe Yu-gyeong, and Yi Jeong-gan. According to page 573 of the Cheonnyeonsa, it was founded by the local Confucian community in the eulhae year, Sukjong 21 (1695; the Western year '1696' given alongside on the page is judged to be a conversion error), and received its royal charter in the sinmyo year, Sukjong 37 (1711); originally located in Songcheon Village, Hwanhui-ri, Oksan-myeon, Cheongwon-gun, it was demolished in the reign of Gojong and then, in 1975 (1976 in the bibliographic-description sources), moved to and restored by the local Confucian community and descendants on the former site (舊址) of Lord Hyojeong's Songcheon villa, to the west of Haengjeong (杏亭).41 With this it has been confirmed that the clan's official account of the dates of foundation and royal charter agrees with the bibliographic-description sources42, but the discrepancy with the self-statement of the 1722 memorial (founded around 丙戌; royal charter not yet received as of 1722)43 has, if anything, become sharper, and its resolution remains a follow-up task. Meanwhile, the list of the fifteen worthies enshrined on pages 574~575 of the Cheonnyeonsa includes all three persons whose additional enshrinement the 1722 memorial requested, Yi Je-sin, Choe Seok-jeong, and Yi In-hyeok, and furthermore later figures such as Nam Gu-man (passed the state examination in 1656), Bak Mun-su (passed in 1723), and Yi Jong-seong (passed in 1747) are also enshrined, which suggests that the petition for additional enshrinement was in the end carried through and that enshrinement was expanded until after the mid-eighteenth century (the time of each additional enshrinement is unverified).44 That the entry for Yi Jeong-gan in the same list states that "Gajeon chunghyo (家傳忠孝), sesu ingyeong (世守仁敬), the eight-character royal calligraphy (八字御筆), was bestowed" shows the tier of terminology of the clan's official account as of 1999.45
B. Obtaining the full Classical Chinese text of the Haengnok
Pages 575~576 of the Cheonnyeonsa carry the full Classical Chinese text and a Korean translation of the Haengnok under the heading "Hyojeong-gong Songcheon Seowon haengnok (孝靖公松泉書院行錄)." With this, the text of the Haengnok, which had previously been confirmed only indirectly through the quotation in the postface to the Gapsul edition (1754) and the circumstances of Yi Geuk-ro's confirmation in 1937,46 has been confirmed directly (though this is a confirmation by the transcript carried in the Cheonnyeonsa, and collation with the original held by the academy is a remaining task). The original text of the key passage is as follows (for problems of decipherment in the transcription and matters of collation, see the footnotes).47
公諱貞幹, 字固夫, 系出全城, 太師公十一代孫也。早陞柏府, 歷躡天官, 出而都觀察使, 晚承宸獎, 擢至中樞院使。公天性醇謹, 行佩百源。不幸早孤, 事母至孝, 行年八十, 常爲老萊之舞·嬰兒之戲, 以娛百歲之親, 又常設慶壽宴 以爲樂。事順之行, 登聞于天, 世宗大王手書賜家傳忠孝世守仁敬八字, 繼有褒美之典敎, 引崔郾[鄲]·徐積之美行, 追唐宣·宋仁之寵獎。旣有崇班 几杖之賜, 又有中宮酒樂之命, 榮光耀世, 世人觀感, 猗歟休哉。時名公鉅卿 咸集賓筵, 權弘·孟思誠·黃喜·河演·卞季良·鄭麟趾諸賢, 序以贊其德, 詩以詠 其美, 有慶壽詩序一帙, 刊行于世。欲知公誠孝之出天, 可以考信於一部詩序 矣。(passage omitted) 公之胤靈巖公士惠, 娶按廉使金先生士廉之孫女, 居淸州梧根村, 有銀杏樹可蔭[菱], 公嘗往來遊憩焉。杏亭尙在, 至今過者覽物而思人云。 (Punctuation by the author)
The gentleman's taboo name was Jeong-gan and his courtesy name Gobu; his line came from Jeonseong (Jeonui), and he was an eleventh-generation descendant of Lord Taesa (the Korean translator of the Cheonnyeonsa also noted that 'this seems to be an error for tenth-generation descendant'). He rose early to the Office of the Inspector-General, passed through the posts of the Ministry of Personnel, and, going out, became Provincial Governor-General; in his late years he received the king's encouragement and was promoted to Commissioner of the Central Council. (passage omitted) At the age of eighty he always delighted his hundred-year-old parent with the dance of Lao Laizi and the playfulness of a little child, and he also always held longevity-celebration banquets and took them as his joy; his filial and obedient conduct became known even to the king, and King Sejong the Great wrote by his own hand (手書) and bestowed the eight characters Gajeon chunghyo, sesu ingyeong, and there followed a royal edict (典敎) commending his excellence, which adduced the fine conduct of Cui Dan [郾] and Xu Ji and followed after the favor and encouragement (寵獎) of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang and Emperor Renzong of Song. There had already been the bestowal of high rank (崇班) and of the staff and armrest, and further the Queen's palace was commanded to send down wine and music, so that the glory shone upon the age and people saw it and were moved. At that time the renowned ministers all gathered at the banquet, and the various worthies, Gwon Hong, Maeng Sa-seong, Hwang Hui, Ha Yeon, Byeon Gye-ryang, Jeong In-ji, and others, praised his virtue in prefaces and sang of his excellence in poems, and one set of the longevity-celebration poems and prefaces was published to the world; if one wishes to know the gentleman's heaven-endowed sincerity and filial piety, one can examine and trust it in this one set of poems and prefaces. (passage omitted) The gentleman's son, Lord Yeongam, Sa-hye (士惠), married the granddaughter of Master Kim Sa-ryeom, the Surveillance Commissioner, and lived in Ogeun Village, Cheongju, where there was a ginkgo tree casting shade, and the gentleman used to come and go and take his leisure and rest there. Haengjeong (杏亭) still remains, and it is said that even now those who pass by look upon it and think of the man of old. (Author's translation, with reference to the Korean translation in the Cheonnyeonsa)
C. What the text of the Haengnok establishes
First, the chain of sources has been corroborated. It has been confirmed that the passage "世宗大王手書賜家傳忠孝世守仁敬八字" quoted by the postface to the Gapsul edition (1754) actually exists in the text of the Haengnok without the difference of a single character. The testimony of the postface was accurate, and it is demonstrated that the judgment attributing the characters to King Sejong at the stage of the Gapsul edition was based on a document that actually exists (the Haengnok).
Second, it has been directly confirmed that the term used in the Haengnok is 'handwriting (手書)' and not 'royal calligraphy (御筆)'. With this, the judgment of this study that, among the premodern documents whose original text is confirmed, the only one to use '御筆' is the 1722 memorial of the Confucian students (carried in the Seungjeongwon ilgi) has been raised from indirect confirmation to direct confirmation.
Third, it has emerged that the author of the Haengnok was aware of the text of the royal edict carried in the Sillok. The Haengnok states that the royal edict (典敎) cited the fine conduct of Cui Dan (崔鄲) and Xu Ji (徐積) and the favor and encouragement of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang and Emperor Renzong of Song, and this corresponds exactly to "唐崔鄲一門孝友, 宣宗賜堂名以寵之; 宋徐積事母純篤, 仁宗授官爵以旌之" in the original text of the royal edict carried in the Sillok (the '崔郾' of the Haengnok transcript is judged to be an error for, or a variant writing of, '崔鄲', which is similar in character form).48 That is, the Haengnok is not a vague oral tradition but a record composed in a state of access to the text of the royal edict (or an accurate transmission of it). However, this only raises the documentary character of the Haengnok; it does not supply a source for the statement of a 'bestowal in his own hand,' which is not in the royal edict. Rather, the narrative structure in which an author who knew the royal edict accurately placed the bestowal of the eight characters 'before' the royal edict (登聞于天 → 手書賜八字 → 繼有褒美之典敎) shows the character of a later, integrative reconstruction of the group of events of 1432.
Fourth, the upper and lower limits of the date of composition have been narrowed. Since the Haengnok mentions that one set of the longevity-celebration poems and prefaces was published to the world (有慶壽詩序一帙, 刊行于世), it was composed after the first printing of the Gyeongsu jip (Collection Celebrating Longevity) (1509), and since it is quoted in the postface to the Gapsul edition (1754), it was composed before that. That is, the composition of the Haengnok is established as falling between 1509 and 1754. Since this interval includes the memorial of 1722, the order of precedence between the Haengnok and the memorial is not decided by this confirmation alone. However, the fact that the two share the common elements of the Lao Laizi story, the full text of the eight characters, and the bestowed banquet (賜宴) while differing in terminology (手書/御筆) raises the probability that they are to be seen as two branches of documentation within the same line of tradition of the Cheongju Confucian community and the clan.
Fifth, errors are also confirmed in the Haengnok. Its calling Yi Jeong-gan an 'eleventh-generation descendant' of Lord Taesa appears to be a mistake for tenth-generation descendant (eleventh generation) in the reckoning of the line of descent (世系), and the Korean translator of the Cheonnyeonsa also pointed this out; and in the transcription there are characters whose reading diverges (宸/震, 鄲/郾, 蔭/菱). This is a detail showing that the Haengnok too is not an infallible authority but a later record that must be read critically.
The possibility that the Haengnok reproduced an earlier family account (家狀) or account of conduct still cannot be excluded, and whether the original held by the academy survives, the exact time of its composition, and its relation to the Samjoseol (1574), which the postface to the Gapsul edition cited as a parallel source (whether the Haengnok derived from the Samjoseol or is an independent tradition), are remaining tasks to be determined by physical examination of the original.
5. The modern rediscovery — 1937 and after
In 1937 Yi Geuk-ro (李克魯) of the Korean Language Society came upon the record in the Seowon haengnok (Academy Record of Conduct) of Songcheon Academy, inspected the genealogy held by descendants of Yi Jeong-gan (the family of the late Yi Jeong-ro), and confirmed the eight characters carried at the head of the volume in two lines of four characters each. This fact was reported at the time in the Dong-A Ilbo as "Royal Calligraphy of King Sejong the Great Discovered," and a related record also remained in Hangeul, No. 5.49 It is important that the character of this stage was not 'the production of a new source' but 'the confirmation and publication of existing clan material.' That is, the modern compilation and reporting are confirmed to have arranged and published existing material, and did not newly add a source for the attribution of the royal calligraphy itself. However, the aspect in which the reporting frame of 'discovery' was subsequently amplified into popular accounts of the type 'the only extant handwriting of King Sejong' is discussed below.
In 2005 the bibliographer Cheon Hye-bong made public the calligraphy album "Sejong Daewang eosa Huiujeong Hyoryeong Daegun bangmun," presumed to be in King Sejong's own hand, and with this a standard for comparison of handwriting came into being. The Guro munhwa daejeon (Digital Encyclopedia of Guro Culture) states that the version carried in the genealogy uses the same handwriting as this album but 'is considered not to be the actual writing of King Sejong but a copy.'50 A press fact-checking report likewise summed up that 'the state has never officially recognized it as royal calligraphy of King Sejong, and it is only presumed to be a carved reproduction of the royal calligraphy.'51 This is the statement closest to the present view at the level of the scholarly community and public institutions.
6. The Jeonui Yean Yi-ssi cheonnyeonsa (Thousand-Year History of the Jeonui-Yean Yi Clan) (1999) and the modern clan accounts before it — the coexistence of two narratives and the tracing back of 'eoje eopil'
A. The two narratives in the main text of the Cheonnyeonsa
The text of Part 6 of the Cheonnyeonsa, obtained in the 6th revision, shows that within the clan's official account as of 1999 two different narratives concerning the time and character of the bestowal of the eight characters coexist.
The first narrative is the theory of the 1432 commendation phase. The Haengnok (pp. 575~576) places the handwriting of the eight characters at the head of the group of events of 1432, and the publication foreword to the Korean translation of the Gyeongsu jip (Collection Celebrating Longevity) (1990, reproduced on p. 559) likewise says that "King Sejong, admiring that outstanding conduct, bestowed the eight characters 'Gajeon chunghyo, sesu ingyeong' (loyalty and filial piety handed down in the family; benevolence and reverence kept through the generations) in his own writing (親書), and then in the 4th month of the imja year (1432, lunar calendar) specially appointed him to the office of Jaheon Daebu, Commissioner of the Central Council," thus placing the bestowal of the eight characters before the special appointment of 1432.52 Although the order differs from that of the 1722 memorial, which placed the royal calligraphy after the promotion (擢拜), all of these belong to the line that describes it as a favor granted during his lifetime around 1432.
The second narrative is the theory of the 1439 deathbed bestowal. Page 557 of the Cheonnyeonsa states that "the eight characters Gajeon chunghyo, sesu ingyeong, which King Sejong the Great, coming in person to visit the sick at the deathbed (臨終), bestowed as eoje eopil (御製御筆, composed by the king and written in the king's own hand), became the family precept that our Jeonui Yi surname keeps generation after generation"53, and page 565 also says, "at the gentleman's deathbed he visited the sick in person (親自問病) and … bestowed the eight characters in his own writing"; page 572 identifies a collection of writings as the source for this and quotes: "However, since it is stated in the Nongsu jip (聾叟集) that at the gentleman's deathbed (臨終) King Sejong visited the sick in person (親自問病) and, deeply moved by the heart of loyalty and filial piety that flowed on like surging water (如水滔滔) in the gentleman's life and after his death, on the spot composed and wrote in his own hand (親製御筆) the eight characters Gajeon chunghyo, sesu ingyeong and bestowed them." This title, which had been difficult to decipher because of the state of printing of the page previously available, was established as Nongsu jip (聾叟集) by the re-read copy obtained in the 7th revision (the character form is clearly 聾, with 耳 beneath 龍).54 This deathbed theory is an element that had not been confirmed in the Sillok (no mention of a sick-visit or royal calligraphy in the obituary notice of the 27th day of the 9th month of 1439 (lunar calendar), the time of death; Chapter Ⅲ, Section 1, Item F), nor anywhere in the premodern documents of the tradition such as the Haengnok, the memorial, and the postface, and within the range confirmed to date, the Nongsu jip quoted by the Cheonnyeonsa is the candidate for its earliest source.
However, the identification of the Nongsu jip has not been established. In public databases such as the Hanguk munjip chonggan (Comprehensive Collection of Korean Literary Collections) and the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, a collection of writings with the title 聾叟集 is not confirmed to date.55 As similar titles, the Nongsu jip (農叟集) (Choe Cheon-ik, 1712~1779, Gyeongju Choe clan) and the Nongsu yugo (農叟遺稿) and Nongsu sumunnok (農叟隨聞錄) (Yi Mun-jeong, 1656~1726, Jeonju Yi clan) are confirmed, and as a person whose pen name was Nongsu (聾叟), Jeon Pil-gi (全必錡, 1691~1756, Okcheon Jeon clan) is confirmed; but in all three cases either the character form (農/聾) differs or the clan differs, and the existence of an entry relating to Yi Jeong-gan is not confirmed. Accordingly, whose collection of writings the Nongsu jip is and of what period, and whether it is a manuscript collection of the kind held by the clan, are matters to be established by physical examination, and the date of formation of the deathbed theory and of the expression 'composed and wrote in his own hand (親製御筆)' likewise cannot have its upper limit specified until that identification has been made (the lower limit is 1999, the time of publication of the Cheonnyeonsa).
B. The tracing back of the expression 'eoje eopil' — revision of the ladder of terminology
Up to its 5th version, this study understood 'eoje eopil (御製御筆)' as an addition at the stage of the modern clan document ("The History of Our Family Precept," in its form from 2022 onward). However, by the text of page 557 above it has been confirmed that this expression already existed in the main text of the Cheonnyeonsa of 1999 at the latest, and if the quotation on page 572 is accurate, its origin can be traced further back to the Nongsu jip (聾叟集) quoted by the Cheonnyeonsa ('親製御筆') (though the date of formation of the Nongsu jip itself is unknown). Accordingly, the ladder of terminology is revised as follows: 手書 (Haengnok; 1754 postface) → 御筆 (carried in an official compilation in 1722, the only premodern instance) → chinseo (in his own writing)·eopil (1990 publication foreword; modern Korean translations) → 御製御筆 (the Cheonnyeonsa of 1999 at the latest; the origin can be traced back to the '親製御筆' of the quoted document, the Nongsu jip) → 御製御筆 (clan document from 2022 onward, inheriting the account of the Cheonnyeonsa line). That is, the 'eoje eopil' of the 2022 document is not a new coinage but takes over the term of the official clan history of 1999, and to establish the actual time of the addition, the identification of the Nongsu jip and a collation of the editions from the modern period onward are necessary.
C. Discrepancies in the detailed dates
Page 572 of the Cheonnyeonsa arranges the favors of 1432 as the royal order of promotion on the 8th day of the 4th month, the royal edict and bestowal of the staff and armrest on the 26th day of the 4th month, and the banquet honoring his parent on the 4th day of the 5th month, but the Sillok entries transmit the royal edict and bestowal of the staff and armrest on the 25th day of the 4th month and the memorial of thanks on the 3rd day of the 5th month (lunar calendar). Whether this difference of about a day is a problem of converting the sexagenary dates or a difference between the records of the Gyeongsu jip line and the Sillok is a matter to be established by collation of the original texts.56
D. The memorial stele inscription (erected 1979) — the account that the epigraphic text chose between the two narratives
The "Hyojeong-gong hwi Jeong-gan yuheo bimyeong (孝靖公諱貞幹遺墟碑銘)" on pages 864~865 of Part 7 of the Cheonnyeonsa, obtained in the 7th revision, adds the tier of modern and contemporary epigraphy to the problem of the coexistence of the two narratives.57 The stele was erected on March 4 of the gimi year (1979) on the former site of Songcheon in Cheongju, serving at the same time as the memorial altar for Lord Jeonseo and Lord Hyojeong, and the inscription was composed by Clan Association president Hui-seung (熙昇) in October of the muo year and signed "Respectfully recorded (謹識) by Hui-seung, President of the Jeonui-Yean Yi Clan Association." The sexagenary notation 'muo (1976)' given alongside on the page is internally inconsistent (muo is 1978, and 1976 is the byeongjin year), and it is consistent to regard it as composed in 1978, immediately before the erection of the stele (1979). The composer Hui-seung was the third president of the Clan Association (in office 1948~1989), and tradition in the clan holds that he is the same person as the Korean-language scholar Yi Hui-seung (李熙昇, 1896~1989).
The inscription describes the eight characters as follows: "King Sejong the Great, hearing of this utmost filial conduct, by special command raised the gentleman's rank, bestowed the staff and armrest together with music, and had a banquet given for him, while also personally writing for him the eight characters Gajeon chunghyo, sesu ingyeong, and further enfeoffing his wife, Lady Kim of Nagan, Jeongbuin, as Jeongdaebuin." That is, this inscription belongs to the line of the first narrative, which places the bestowal of the eight characters in the commendation phase of 1432~1434, and its expression too stays at 'personally writing for him' (the handwriting line) and does not use 'eoje eopil.' The restrained terminology of the Haengnok and the postface to the Gapsul edition was thus carried on down to the epigraphic text of 1978, and this is a current distinguished, within the same Cheonnyeonsa, from the line of the Nongsu jip (the deathbed theory; 親製御筆). In addition, the inscription itself states the intention of consoling the sorrow of having been unable for thirty-three years, because of the division of the country after Liberation, to visit and tend the grave in Jangdan (長湍), and of continuing the memorial incense offering of the once-yearly rite (歲一薦) before this stele until the way is opened, which shows that the memorial stele functioned as a substitute ritual site for a clan displaced from its home ground. That the verse inscription (銘) is not in Classical Chinese but in the form of a Korean-language sijo is also a feature reflecting the composer's career and the character of the times.
7. Modern and contemporary clan records — "The History of Our Family Precept" and the reconfirmation of 2022
A. Outline of the document
"The History of Our Family Precept," kept by the Jeonui-Yean Yi Clan Association Headquarters, is a clan document that displays the eight characters on its front side and explains their history.58 The document defines the eight characters as eoje eopil (御製御筆) that Lord Hyojeong received from King Sejong, designates Yi Jeong-gan as the tenth generation from the founding ancestor, states that the king bestowed wine and music (酒樂) and thereby commended and honored (褒旌) his loyalty and filial piety, and then carries the original text and a Korean translation of the entry of the 18th day of the 7th month of 1722 (lunar calendar) in the Seungjeongwon ilgi (承政院日記, Diaries of the Royal Secretariat), with the evaluation that "the Seungjeongwon ilgi is, needless to say, a reliable record of the state." At the end, the circumstances of the discovery are appended: that this entry was confirmed in October 2022 by the clansman Yong-seong (用成, twenty-ninth generation of the middle branch).
B. The reconfirmation of 2022 — a structural parallel with 1937
The circumstances of discovery transmitted by this document are in themselves worth recording as part of the history of the tradition. Whereas in 1937 Yi Geuk-ro, taking the record of the Seowon haengnok as his clue, confirmed the physical object at the head of the genealogy, in 2022 a member of the clan confirmed the statement about the royal calligraphy in an official record (the Seungjeongwon ilgi). These two scenes, repeated across an interval of 85 years, show a consistent pattern in which the community of the tradition has strengthened the grounds of the tradition by connecting its internal tradition with external public records. In particular, the confirmation of 2022 was the clan's independent finding of the very entry that this research analyzed in Chapter Ⅲ, Section 2, and it is significant in that the judgment of this study concerning the earliest confirmed point in the official records (1722) and the result of the clan's investigation meet on the same source.
C. The tiers of interpretation — the authenticity of the record and the factuality of the statement
The evaluation in the document ("a reliable record of the state") is, from the standpoint of source studies, entirely accurate as to one half. The documentary authenticity of the entry in question in the Seungjeongwon ilgi, that is, the point that it is an actually existing original official record, admits of no doubt. In source criticism, however, the authenticity of a record is distinguished from the factuality of the statement contained in that record. What this entry reliably demonstrates is the fact that 'in 1722 the Confucian community of Cheongju made a statement to this effect to the court,' and the content of the statement, the bestowal of the royal calligraphy in 1432 itself, remains a separate question to be confirmed by tracing back the chain of sources of that statement (memorial ← tradition of the Confucian community and the academy ← ?). That the entry itself, by saying "the people of the district praise it admiringly to this day," makes clear that the character of the statement is tradition is as was seen in Chapter Ⅲ, Section 2. This distinction does not deny the tradition of the royal calligraphy; it makes precise what each source demonstrates and what it does not demonstrate.
D. 'Eoje eopil' — the genealogy of the elevation of terminology
The 'eoje eopil (御製御筆)' used by the document is a double attribution, that the king composed (製) the text and also wrote (筆) it. However, "遂以御筆, 書…八大字" in the original text of the Seungjeongwon ilgi says only that the king 'wrote (書)' and does not state the element of having composed, and the term in the original texts of the Haengnok and the postface to the Gapsul edition stays at 'handwriting (手書).' As confirmed in the 6th revision (Chapter Ⅲ, Section 6), 'eoje eopil' is not an expression first created in this document but already appears in the main text of the Cheonnyeonsa of 1999 (p. 557) at the latest, and there is a possibility that its origin can be traced back to the collection of writings quoted by the Cheonnyeonsa ('親製御筆'). Accordingly, the 'eoje eopil' of this document is positioned as an inheritance of the account of the official clan history line of 1999, and it corresponds to the final stage within the ladder of the elevation of terminology that runs from handwriting (手書) → royal calligraphy (御筆, 1722) → chinseo·eopil (modern Korean translations) → eoje eopil (1999 at the latest → documents from 2022 onward). In addition, since differences of transcription from the original entry (御畢·入大字) and a problem in the range of quotation (the passage "州人至今艶稱之" not included) are confirmed in the quoted text of the document, correction against the original text is necessary when the document is revised.59
Ⅳ. Comparison of the documents: the changes in expression
If one compares the expressions in which each document treats this matter, the process of amplification of the tradition becomes apparent.
| Time of composition | Document | Relevant expression (gist) | Tier judgment |
| 1432 | Sejong sillok (世宗實錄, Veritable Records of King Sejong), royal edict of the 25th day of the 4th month | Special promotion; bestowal of the staff and armrest; commendation of filial conduct. No mention of royal calligraphy | ① Confirmed fact |
| 1432 | Sejong sillok, memorial of thanks of the 3rd day of the 5th month | Thanks for the office and rank, the staff, and the armrest. No mention of royal calligraphy | ① Confirmed fact |
| 1456 | Spirit-path stele | Full Classical Chinese text deciphered (entire range of preface, lineage, and verse inscription): 褒書·超陞·几杖·酒樂. No mention of royal calligraphy | ② Record close to the event (full text confirmed) |
| First printed 1509 (composed around 1432) | Gyeongsu jip (extant copies are later editions) | The confirmed congratulatory poems (Gwon Hong, Maeng Sa-seong, Hwang Hui, Yu Gwan) sing of the royal edict, the staff and armrest, the dove-headed staff, and the wine and music, but do not mention the eight characters | Equivalent to ② (composite edition tiers: history of later additions, losses, and supplements) |
| 1574 | Mallyeok edition, Samjoseol | 'Written by King Sejong the Great's own hand (手書)' (based on press reports; original unverified) | ② Later record (provisional) |
| Composed between 1509 and 1754 | Seowon haengnok of Songcheon Academy (original text obtained from the transcript carried in the Cheonnyeonsa) | '世宗大王手書賜…八字' (full Classical Chinese text obtained). Accurately reflects the precedents cited in the royal edict (崔鄲·徐積). Not royal calligraphy but 手書 | ③ Clan and academy tradition (text obtained; physical examination of the original needed) |
| 1722 | Seungjeongwon ilgi, entry of the 18th day of the 7th month (memorial of the Confucian students of Cheongju) | '遂以御筆, 書家傳忠孝世守仁敬八大字, 以褒之' — a statement of the Confucian community's tradition carried in an official document. States of itself that it is tradition with '州人至今艶稱之' | ② Later record (carried in an official compilation) |
| 1754 | Gapsul edition, postface by Yi Jing-guk (original text obtained) | The eight characters printed at the head of the old genealogy, with no notation of the origin of the handwriting → judged to be '手書·特賜' on the basis of the Haengnok and Lord Cheonggang's handwriting; carried as a copy (重模). The expression 御筆 does not occur in the original text | ② Later record |
| 1773 | Seungjeongwon ilgi, entry of the 3rd day of the 4th month | King Yeongjo grants an audience to Yi Jing-seong, tenth-generation descendant of Yi Jeong-gan, and bestows a staff and armrest. The precedent invoked is the staff and armrest; no mention of royal calligraphy | ① Confirmed fact (of 1773) |
| 1937 | Dong-A Ilbo; Hangeul, No. 5 | 'Royal Calligraphy of King Sejong the Great Discovered' | Modern press report |
| 1990 | Publication foreword to the Korean translation of the Gyeongsu jip (Yi Jong-gwan) | '八字를 親書 下賜하시며 이어 壬子(1432) 4月 … 特敍' (bestowed the eight characters in his own writing, and then in the 4th month of the imja year (1432) … specially appointed) — described as a bestowal in his own writing before the special appointment of 1432 | ⑤ Modern clan compilation (the account of the publication history has documentary value) |
| 1999 | Main text of the Cheonnyeonsa | p. 557, 'bestowed at the deathbed as eoje eopil'; p. 572 quotes '親製御筆' from the Nongsu jip (聾叟集) as its source | ⑤ Modern clan compilation (earliest confirmed point of the deathbed theory and of eoje eopil; identification of the Nongsu jip needed) |
| 2022 onward | Clan document "The History of Our Family Precept" | Defined as 'eoje eopil (御製御筆)'; evaluates the 1722 entry as 'a reliable record of the state' | ③ Clan tradition (inheritance of the account of the 1999 line) |
| Present | Hyangto munhwa jeonja daejeon (Encyclopedia of Korean Local Culture), etc. | 'Considered to be a copy of King Sejong's royal calligraphy'; no official recognition by the state | ④ View of the scholarly community and public institutions |
In addition to the table, the positions of the documents confirmed in the 7th revision are as follows. The obituary notice of the 27th day of the 9th month of Sejong 21 (1439; lunar calendar) in the Sejong sillok (tier ①), as a contemporary record of the deathbed phase, transmits only the condolences and the conferral of a posthumous title and does not mention a sick-visit or royal calligraphy; the "Jeongdaebuin Kim-ssi myopyo" (Tomb Marker of Lady Kim, Jeongdaebuin) (1445, a contemporary record equivalent to tier ①) does not mention the eight characters even while squarely praising the family's model conduct; and the "Hyojeong-gong hwi Jeong-gan yuheo bimyeong" (composed 1978, erected 1979; tier ⑤, modern clan compilation) maintains, in the line of the first narrative, the handwriting-line expression 'personally writing for him.' The changes in expression are also noteworthy. To sum up within the range in which the original text is confirmed, the terms of the Seowon haengnok (full Classical Chinese text obtained) and of the postface to the Gapsul edition (1754, original text obtained) are consistently 'handwriting (手書)' and 'special bestowal (特賜),' and the only premodern instance of the formalized term 'royal calligraphy (御筆)' is the 1722 memorial of the Confucian students (carried in the Seungjeongwon ilgi). The attribution of 'royal calligraphy' to the postface to the Gapsul edition is a supplement at the stage of modern Korean translation, and 'eoje eopil (御製御筆)' appears in the main text of the Cheonnyeonsa of 1999 at the latest and was carried on into the clan documents from 2022 onward (its origin can be traced back to the collection of writings quoted by the Cheonnyeonsa). Thereafter it was amplified in modern press reporting into 'royal calligraphy discovered,' and in some contemporary popular accounts even into 'the only handwriting of King Sejong the Great remaining in this world.' By contrast, the object descriptions of public institutions limit it to 'a copy (模寫).' Amplification is also confirmed in the biographical information. The royal edict in the Sillok said 'your age has passed 70 and your mother has exceeded 90,'60 but in later tradition and modern accounts the form in circulation is that 'the 80-year-old Yi Jeong-gan wore many-colored clothes before his 100-year-old (or 102-year-old) aged mother.' This is understood as the stereotyping and maximizing of figures that commonly appears in the process of transmission, and it is circumstantial evidence showing the environment of transmission of the narrative attributing the royal calligraphy.
Ⅴ. Modern and contemporary transmission and the process of compilation of the Jeonui Yean Yi-ssi cheonnyeonsa
1. Purpose of the chapter and principles of exposition
This chapter is not a chapter for criticizing or defending any particular person. It is a chapter that analyzes on the basis of what materials, and through what editorial process, the Jeonui Yean Yi-ssi cheonnyeonsa (1999, hereafter the Cheonnyeonsa) formed the account given today. Whereas Chapter Ⅲ, Section 6 dealt with the text of the Cheonnyeonsa (the coexistence of two narratives; the tracing back of 'eoje eopil'), this chapter deals with the process and organization of compilation that produced that text.
There are four principles of exposition. First, judgments are made only from the texts obtained — the publication foreword ("On Publishing This Book"), the preface, the main text (Part 6, pp. 550~579), and the record of documents (Part 7, pp. 860~865). Second, publisher and author are not the same concept. Publishing, supervision, arrangement, writing, editing, and proofreading are different roles, and each must be demonstrated by a separate source. Third, concerning the roles of persons, statements that someone 'made it,' 'fabricated it,' 'invented it,' or 'distorted it,' and statements that someone 'had no role at all,' are all excluded. The present sources demonstrate neither. Fourth, matters that are not confirmed are not inferred but are concluded with 'is not confirmed to date,' while the path of confirmation (verification procedure) is noted alongside.
2. Reconstructing the Compilation System — What Is Confirmed and What Is Not Confirmed
The circumstances of publication are confirmed by the Publication Address (간행사). Publication was approved at the 22nd regular general meeting of the Clan Association on May 30, 1997, and after 24 months of compilation the first edition, 1,134 pages in all, was published in May 1999.61 What is confirmed of the compilation organization is the following: publication committee chair Yi Dae-seon (李大善); editorial committee chair Yi Yong-ho (龍鎬); the division of writing by branch (the history of the early ancestors and the lineage history of the senior branch by Yi Yong-ho, the middle branch by Yi Jun-sang, the junior branch by Yi Tae-ho); review by the clansmen Heung-se, Jong-won, Jun-gyu, and Jing-no; and the supervision of the full text by the publisher, president Yi Jong-gwan (李鍾寬).62 Since the Publication Address states that the writing was done on the basis of the manuscripts and materials of each lineage, it is also confirmed that beneath the layer of writing there existed a separate layer of manuscripts supplied by the lineages. Whether those manuscripts survive, however, is not confirmed.
In the 9th revision, three kinds of actual pages from the appended matter at the end of the volume were additionally secured, and the reconstruction of the compilation system advanced greatly. First, page 1133, "Those Who Helped in Compiling This Book" (「이책을 편찬하는데 도움을 주신 분들」; in order of the three branches), is the full roster of the compilation organization.63 Its text is as follows.
| Post / unit | Roster (as written on p. 1133) |
|---|---|
| President | Jong-gwan (鍾寬) |
| Publication committee chair | Dae-seon (大善) |
| Managing director | Sang-ho (尙鎬) |
| Editorial committee chair | Yong-ho (龍鎬) |
| Review committee chair | Heung-se (興世) |
| Review committee members | Jong-won (宗遠), Jun-gyu (準圭), Jing-no (徵魯) |
| General arrangement and editing | Tae-ho (泰浩) |
| Proofreading | Tae-se (泰世) |
| Writing of Part 1 | Jong-gwan (鍾寬) |
| Co-authors of Parts 2, 3, 4, and 5 | Hui-ok (熙玉), Jong-won (宗遠), Yong-ho (龍鎬), Tae-ho (泰浩) |
| Part 6, Lineage History of the Daesaseonggong Branch | Lead author Yong-ho; author Han-guk (漢國); suppliers of materials Gyo-seon, Hui-ok, Han-cheol, Won-ho, and others |
| Part 6, Lineage History of the Munjanggong Branch | Lead author Jun-sang (準尙); suppliers of materials Jun-gi, Yong-seong, Yong-man, Yeong-seon, Heon-gu, Hyeong-seon, Jun-cheol |
| Part 6, Lineage History of the Seonbu Jeonseogong Branch | Lead author Tae-ho (泰浩); author Jong-gwan (鍾寬); suppliers of materials Myeong-ho, Gi-ho, Chung-se, Gwang-ho |
| Arrangement of Part 8 | Ji-seon (之善) |
This roster is consistent with the account in the Publication Address (editorial committee chair Yong-ho; the division by branch among Yong-ho for the senior branch, Jun-sang for the middle branch, and Tae-ho for the junior branch), and at the same time newly settles several items that were previously unverified: ⑴ the distinction of rank between the chair of the review committee (Heung-se) and its members (three persons); ⑵ the existence of a person in charge of 'general arrangement and editing' (Tae-ho) and a person in charge of 'proofreading' (Tae-se); ⑶ that the author of Part 1 is Jong-gwan; ⑷ that in the Lineage History of the Seonbu Jeonseogong Branch in Part 6, a separate 'author,' Jong-gwan, is listed alongside the lead author Tae-ho; and ⑸ that for the lineage history of each branch a layer of suppliers of materials exists in the form of a roster.
Second, the "Editor's Afterword (編輯後記)" on pp. 1134–1135 was written by the 主筆 (chief writer) Yi Tae-ho (李泰浩) under the date June 1, 1999, and is first-hand testimony on the practical work of compilation.64 According to the Afterword, the chief writer took up his brush on November 1, 1998 and laid it down on June 1, 1999 (a full seven months, writing while ill), and he recalls as the foundation of his writing his pride in being a direct descendant of Lord Cheonggang (Yi Je-sin), the central figure in the founding of the Mallyeok edition, the writing of the Samjoseol (삼조설), and the devising of the gyeje-style (계제식) form of entry. In particular, the Afterword states explicitly: "I make it known that the forced demands of some clansmen (宗人) who sought to glorify (美化) the deeds (事績) of their own direct ancestors (直祖) by exaggeration (誇張) or falsehood (虛僞) were deleted (削除) with the scholarly conscience that 'history cannot be distorted.'" This text settles two things: ⑴ that in the course of compilation there actually existed pressure demanding exaggeration and glorification, and editorial judgment that filtered it out; and ⑵ that the final text of the Cheonnyeonsa (『천년사』, Thousand-Year History) is therefore a product that passed through the chief writer's editorial filter. The '24 months of compilation' in the Publication Address and the '7 months of writing' in the Afterword are not a contradiction; they read consistently, the former as the period of the project from the general meeting's approval (May 30, 1997), the latter as the period in which the chief writer wrote the manuscript.
Third, the colophon settles the edition history and the posts.65 Printed and published June 1, 1999 (Gimyo year); enlarged edition published April 30, 2002 (Imo year); issuing body, Jeonui-Yean Yi Clan Association Headquarters (Jangan-dong, Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul); publisher Yi Jong-gwan (李鍾寬); editor Yi Dae-seon (李大善); managing director Yi Sang-ho (李尙鎬); compilation Yi Tae-ho (李泰浩); printing Gichang Jokbosa. Three points are to be noted. ⑴ The publication date in the colophon (June 1, 1999) and the 'May 1999' of the earlier account are not a contradiction; they are reconciled in that the latter is the time at which the Foreword and the Publication Address were written and the former is the actual date of publication. ⑵ The 'editor' (Dae-seon) of the colophon and the 'editorial committee chair' (Yong-ho) of the roster bear different titles and appear to be designations of different roles (the editor as the person responsible for publication versus the editorial committee chair as the person responsible for the practical work of editing), and the two are not used interchangeably on the same plane. ⑶ Since the existence of the enlarged edition (2002) has been newly confirmed, a new verification task arises: to collate which of the two editions, the first edition or the enlarged edition, the pages this study has been citing (Part 6, pp. 550–579; Part 7, pp. 860–865; end of volume, pp. 1133–1135) belong to, and whether the relevant passages were moved or revised between the two editions (since the secured colophon itself includes the publication particulars of the enlarged edition, the copy is judged to be a printing in the enlarged-edition line).
With this, among the previously unverified items, ⑵ the full roster of the compilation and proofreading committee members has been secured (p. 1133), and ⑶ the practical procedures have been confirmed in part (the chief writer, the period of writing, the principle of deletion) by the Editor's Afterword. By contrast, within ⑴, the existence and text of an Issuance Address (발간사), and ⑷ the holding of compilation meetings and the existence of minutes, are still not confirmed. The state of confirmation is summarized in the following table.
| Item relating to compilation | State of confirmation | Source / remarks |
|---|---|---|
| Publishing body and circumstances (approval by general meeting, 24 months of compilation) | Confirmed | Publication Address |
| Publisher (Yi Jong-gwan, president of the Clan Association) | Confirmed | Publication Address; Foreword |
| Publication committee chair (Yi Dae-seon) | Confirmed | Publication Address |
| Editorial committee chair (Yi Yong-ho) | Confirmed | Publication Address |
| Division of writing by branch (Yi Yong-ho, Yi Jun-sang, Yi Tae-ho) | Confirmed | Publication Address |
| Review (Heung-se, Jong-won, Jun-gyu, Jing-no) | Confirmed | Publication Address |
| Supervision of the full text (Yi Jong-gwan) | Confirmed | Text of the Publication Address |
| Explicit naming of those who arranged individual portions (the settlement history of the Ochang lineage, etc.) | Confirmed | p. 579, "Record of the Movements of Each Lineage" (「각 문별 이동사기」) + roster on p. 1133 |
| Existence and text of the Editor's Afterword | Confirmed (9th) | pp. 1134–1135, 主筆 Yi Tae-ho, June 1, 1999 |
| Existence and text of an Issuance Address | Not confirmed to date | Front-matter pages not secured |
| Full roster of compilation and proofreading committee members | Confirmed (9th) | p. 1133, "Those Who Helped in Compiling This Book" |
| Practical procedures of manuscript preparation, editing, and proofreading | Partly confirmed (9th) | Editor's Afterword (period of writing, principle of deletion); detailed procedures unverified |
| Holding of compilation meetings; minutes | Not confirmed to date | Investigation of Clan Association records needed |
| Publication and editorial posts in the colophon | Confirmed (9th) | Publisher Jong-gwan; editor Dae-seon; managing director Sang-ho; compilation Tae-ho |
| Existence of the enlarged edition (April 30, 2002) | Confirmed (9th) | Colophon; collation of first / enlarged editions is a new task |
3. Division of Writing and the Attribution of Units of Narrative
Page 579 of the Cheonnyeonsa, "Record of the Movements of Each Lineage," is a rare internal record that lists side by side those who arranged and wrote each portion. According to it, the history of the Songcheon villa of Lord Hyojeong of the 11th generation and the history of the settlement of the Ochang (梧倉) lineage in the Cheongju–Cheongwon area were arranged by Jong-gwan (鍾寬), while the Pyeonggangong branch was written directly by Myeong-ho and Gi-ho, and the Cheonggang-gong branch by Tae-ho.66 This text settles two things. First, that persons responsible for individual units of narrative in the Cheonnyeonsa existed in addition to the editorial committee chair and the branch authors; and second, that within the Seonbu Jeonseogong branch portion of Part 6, where the narrative relating to the family precept is concentrated, at least the unit on the settlement history of the Ochang lineage has its responsible person explicitly named.
The text of p. 579, however, does not specify the boundaries of the units of narrative page by page. There is a high probability that the section containing the haengnok (행록, record of conduct) (pp. 573–576) and the passage on p. 565 containing the narrative of the deathbed and the personal writing belong to the unit of 'the settlement history of the Ochang lineage,' but the attribution of individual sections and sentences remains a judgment of probability and is not asserted. Materials that would identify the author — manuscripts submitted by the branches, records of editorial instructions, minutes of review and compilation meetings, and the like — are not confirmed to date.
The roster on p. 1133 secured in the 9th revision narrows this judgment by one step. Since in the roster the attribution of authorship for the Lineage History of the Seonbu Jeonseogong Branch in Part 6 is explicitly given as 'lead author Tae-ho, author Jong-gwan,' the scope of responsibility for the writing of the stretch of pp. 550–579, which carries the deathbed account (p. 557) and the text quoting the Nongsujip (『농수집』) (p. 572), is narrowed, on the face of the roster, to these two persons.67 For three reasons, however, asserting it to be the 'creation' of a particular person still does not hold. ⑴ The listing of 'lead author' and 'author' side by side does not specify the actual division between the two — the boundaries at the level of section and sentence. ⑵ Since p. 572 is a text that explicitly quotes the Nongsujip, whether the passage in question is the author's invention or a reproduction of an earlier document cannot be determined until the physical Nongsujip is identified (the lower bound '1999 at the latest' is maintained). ⑶ As the Editor's Afterword states explicitly, the final text passed through the chief writer's editorial judgment (the principle of deleting exaggeration and falsehood), so that an editorial layer intervenes between the printed text and the submitted manuscripts.68 In short, the 'scope' of the attribution of authorship has been settled by the roster, but the 'origination' of the narrative is still an open question.
4. The Role of Yi Jong-gwan (李鍾寬) — An Item-by-Item Examination
In accordance with the research instructions, Yi Jong-gwan's life, official career (career as a judge), activities in the lineage and the Clan Association, and the nature of his participation in the compilation of the Cheonnyeonsa are examined item by item. The principle of examination is the same as in Section 1. Neither the conclusion that he 'made it' nor the conclusion that he 'had no role at all' is presupposed, and the account is confined to the extent that the sources directly prove.
A. Identification of the person
In the initial investigation of this study the person could not be identified by searching public databases, but with the securing of the Cheonnyeonsa (1999) his identification was settled. Yi Jong-gwan (李鍾寬), as president of the Jeonui-Yean Yi Clan Association at the time in 1999, was the publisher of the Cheonnyeonsa and the author of its Foreword, and the Publication Address, saying "the publisher, president Jong-gwan (鍾寬), supervised the full text of this book," explicitly records that he was the supervisor of the full text.69 With the Hanja of his name settled as 寬, the possibility of confusion with persons of the same name was greatly reduced, and the search conditions for subsequent verification were in place.
B. The extent of the role confirmed by the sources
The secured text additionally settles four facts. First, Yi Jong-gwan is the author of the Publication Address of the fourth printing, in Korean translation, of the Gyeongsujip (『경수집』), dated February 1, 1990, which he signed at the end "Jong-gwan (鍾寬), president of the Jeonui Yi Jeonseogong Branch Association, 19th-generation descendant of Lord Hyojeong, bows twice and respectfully writes."70 By this it was settled from a primary text that he was a 19th-generation descendant of Lord Hyojeong (Yi Jeong-gan) and was president of the Jeonseogong Branch Association at the time in 1990. Since that Publication Address describes the eight characters as specially written in the fourth month of 1432 after the 'bestowal of a personal writing (親書),' it is also the first confirmed case of Yi Jong-gwan directly writing the narrative relating to the family precept in an official document. Second, p. 568 of the Cheonnyeonsa, in an article on the transplanting of the Gongju simok (시목; Lord Hyojeong's tree) (an account of about 1996–97), refers to him as "Jong-gwan (鍾寬), chairman of the board of the Clan Association," so that his tenure as chairman of the board of the Clan Association before taking office as president is confirmed.71 Third, as seen in the preceding section, he is explicitly named as the person who arranged the portion on the settlement history of the Ochang lineage in Part 6 of the Cheonnyeonsa (p. 579; see the preceding section). Fourth, the colophon secured in the 9th revision reconfirms him as publisher (發行人),72 and the roster on p. 1133 explicitly names him as the author of Part 1 and as 'author' of the Lineage History of the Seonbu Jeonseogong Branch in Part 6 (listed alongside the lead author Tae-ho).73 In addition, the Editor's Afterword recalls him as "the president of the Clan Association, who showed in his own person the proper attitude toward clan affairs (宗事) and the uprightness of a scholar, and who poured perseverance into me through his encouragement," thereby separately attesting to a role of support and encouragement toward the chief writer.74
With this, while this study's principle of not presupposing that 'Yi Jong-gwan made it / arranged it' is maintained, the settled account has advanced as far as the extent to which the sources speak for themselves — the authorship of the 1990 Publication Address, tenure as chairman of the board and as president of the Clan Association, publication and supervision of the full text of the Cheonnyeonsa, the arrangement of the portion on the settlement history of the Ochang lineage, and the explicit naming as author of Part 1 and of the Lineage History of the Seonbu Jeonseogong Branch. However, 'being explicitly named as author' and 'his having written a particular section or sentence' are separate matters, and the latter can be made concrete only when the boundary of the division with the lead author and the editorial layer (the chief writer's principle of deletion) are clarified.
Meanwhile, the Foreword begins with the anecdote of his telling his grandson the tale of Lord Hyojeong (the story of saving a roe deer with young), and presents as the motive for compilation the need for a clan history in Korean for the hangul generation, who cannot read documents in classical Chinese.75 This is material showing that the tradition of the family precept and of filial conduct was still being reproduced orally at the end of the twentieth century, and showing the phase in which the medium of transmission shifted from classical Chinese to Korean, and it serves as a basis for the account of the history of transmission (Chapter Ⅺ).
C. State of confirmation by item
The items for examination enumerated in the research instructions are arranged by state of confirmation as follows. 'Confirmed' is limited to what is proved by primary text (Publication Address, Foreword, main text, signature), and everything else is closed as 'not confirmed to date.'
| Item examined | State of confirmation | Source or route of verification |
|---|---|---|
| Career as a judge | Not confirmed to date | Search of directories of the legal profession, court staff registers, and the official gazette |
| Years of birth and death; official career | Not confirmed to date | Same as above |
| Lineage activities | Confirmed: president of the Jeonseogong Branch Association (1990) | Signature to the Publication Address of the Korean translation of the Gyeongsujip |
| Clan Association activities | Confirmed: chairman of the board (c. 1996–97) → president (1999) | Cheonnyeonsa, p. 568; Foreword |
| Participation in the compilation of the Cheonnyeonsa | Confirmed: publisher; supervision of the full text; arrangement of the settlement history of the Ochang lineage; explicitly named as author of Part 1 and of the Lineage History of the Seonbu Jeonseogong Branch | Publication Address; p. 579; p. 1133; colophon |
| Role as publisher | Confirmed | Publication Address; Foreword |
| Whether he actually took part in the writing | Confirmed (9th): explicitly named for the writing of Part 1 and as 'author' of the Lineage History of the Seonbu Jeonseogong Branch. However, the division with the lead author (Tae-ho) and the boundaries at the level of sections are not settled | p. 1133; p. 579 |
| Whether he took part in the editing | In the roster, 'general arrangement and editing' is explicitly assigned to Tae-ho; Yi Jong-gwan is not named under the editing item | p. 1133; confirmation in working records needed |
| Whether he took part in the final proofreading | In the roster, 'proofreading' is explicitly assigned to Tae-se; Yi Jong-gwan is not named under the proofreading item | p. 1133; confirmation in proofreading records needed |
| Whether he attended compilation meetings | Not confirmed to date | Confirmation in minutes needed |
| Whether minutes exist | Not confirmed to date | Investigation of Clan Association records needed |
| Participation in the compilation of the genealogy (daedongbo, comprehensive genealogy) | Not confirmed to date | Prefaces and postfaces of the daedongbo; rosters of compilation committee members |
D. Verification procedure
With the Hanja of the name settled and the record of tenure (president of the Jeonseogong Branch Association 1990 → chairman of the board of the Clan Association → president 1999) secured, the verification procedure has become practicable. (1) Search for 李鍾寬 in directories of the legal profession, court staff registers, and the official gazette to confirm the career as a judge. (2) Confirm the same person's participation in the prefaces and postfaces and the rosters of compilation committee members of the daedongbo (especially the editions of the latter half of the twentieth century). (3) Confirm in the minutes and bulletins of the Clan Association the period of tenure and activities, and the records of the compilation meetings for the Cheonnyeonsa. (4) The influence on later records is measured by collating the narrative relating to the family precept in the Cheonnyeonsa with the text of the documents preceding it, so as to determine whether there is narrative newly added at the stage of the Cheonnyeonsa. This collation, prior to any judgment of an individual's contribution, has independent value as the work of settling what the official narrative of the clan was as of 1999.
Meanwhile, as to the Jeonseong sego (『전성세고(全城世稿)』, Family Writings of Jeonseong) mentioned in the earlier brief, a sego of the Daegu Jeonui Yi (the line of Yi Jong-mun, leader of a righteous army in the Imjin War) published by Kim Geun-jung in 1897 is confirmed,76 but this is a document of a separate line whose direct relevance to the question of the eight characters is not confirmed. Whether the Jeonseong sego to which the brief refers is this book, or another lineage document of the same title, must first be confirmed.
5. The Source Materials Quoted in the Cheonnyeonsa (『천년사』, Thousand-Year History) and the Relations of Quotation
The narrative relating to the family precept in the Cheonnyeonsa is divided into two layers. One is the layer of reproduction (轉載), which carries the full classical Chinese text or the Korean translation of the source materials as they stand (mainly the haengnok section and the Record of Documents in Part 7); the other is the layer of main-text narrative (the stretch of pp. 555–572), newly written by synthesizing them. The relations of quotation confirmed in the secured pages are as follows.
| Source material | Layer of origin | Location and manner of inclusion in the Cheonnyeonsa | State of confirmation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Relevant articles of the Sejong sillok (世宗實錄, Veritable Records of King Sejong) | ⑴ Contemporary 15th-century record | Presumed to be the standard for the chronological account in the main text, but the manner of quotation is unverified. The arrangement of dates on p. 572 (4.8 / 4.26 / 5.4) differs from the Sillok (4.25 / 5.3) | Collation needed |
| "Tomb Marker of Lady Kim, Jeong-daebuin" (「정대부인김씨묘표」) (1445) | ⑴ Contemporary 15th-century record | Original text and translation reproduced on p. 860 | Decipherment complete |
| Spirit-path stele inscription (1456) | ⑴ Near-contemporary 15th-century epigraph | Excerpt on p. 570; full classical Chinese text and Korean translation reproduced on pp. 860–864 | Decipherment of full text complete |
| Genealogy prefaces and postfaces (Samjoseol 1574; postface of the Gapsul edition 1754) | ⑶ Genealogical record | Presumed to be reflected in the main-text narrative. Whether directly reproduced may lie in pages not yet secured | Partly unverified |
| "Record of Conduct of Lord Hyojeong, Songcheon Seowon" (「효정공 송천서원 행록」) | ⑷ Lineage and seowon tradition (formed 1509–1754) | Full classical Chinese text and Korean translation reproduced on pp. 573–576 | Text secured; physical inspection of the original needed |
| Article of 1722 in the Seungjeongwon ilgi (承政院日記, Diaries of the Royal Secretariat) | ⑵ Later official record | Quotation not confirmed in the secured pages (confirmation at the level of the clan dates to 2022; Chapter Ⅲ, Section 7) | Unverified |
| Nongsujip (『농수집(聾叟集)』, Collected Writings of Nongsu) | Unknown (not identified) | Quoted on p. 572 — the source for the account of the deathbed visit and for '親製御筆' | Physical copy unverified; highest-priority task |
| Publication Address of the Korean translation of the Gyeongsujip (『경수집』) (1990) | ⑸ Modern clan document | Reproduced on pp. 559–560 | Secured |
| "Inscription of the Memorial Stele at the Historic Site of Lord Hyojeong, Personal Name Jeong-gan" (「효정공휘정간유허비명」) (composed 1978) | ⑸ Modern epigraph | Reproduced on pp. 864–865 | Secured |
The above relations, diagrammed by layer, are as follows.
⑴ Contemporary 15th-c. records Sejong sillok (1432, 1439) Tomb marker (1445) Spirit-path stele (1456)
(no mention of the eight characters) |reproduced p. 860 |reproduced pp. 860–864
v v
⑶ Genealogical records Mallyeok edition Samjoseol (1574, tentative) --> Gapsul edition postface (1754)
^ quoted as source |reflected in main-text narrative (presumed)
⑷ Lineage/seowon tradition Seowon haengnok (formed 1509–1754) ------+ |full text reproduced pp. 573–576
v
⑵ Later official record Seungjeongwon ilgi 1722 memorial (first official record to carry the royal calligraphy)
--- whether quoted in the Cheonnyeonsa unverified in the secured pages
⑸ Modern compilation Publication Address of the Gyeongsujip translation (1990) --- reproduced pp. 559–560
Unknown Nongsujip (identification unknown) --- quoted p. 572 (deathbed account; 親製御筆)
⑸ Modern epigraph Memorial stele inscription (composed 1978) --- reproduced pp. 864–865
|
v
Jeonui Yean Yi-ssi cheonnyeonsa (1999), main-text narrative (pp. 555–579)
|
v
"The History of Our Family Precept" (after 2022) --- inherits '御製御筆'What this distinction answers is the following. What the Cheonnyeonsa quoted as it stands (the reproduction of the haengnok, the spirit-path stele inscription, the tomb marker, the memorial stele inscription, and the 1990 Publication Address) performed the function of preserving the original texts, and resupplied a tradition centered on documents in classical Chinese to the space of readers of Korean. It is also thanks to this layer of reproduction that this study was able to verify the chain of sources. By contrast, in the newly edited part (the layer of main-text narrative), elements are confirmed that were not confirmed in earlier documents; these are treated in the next section.
6. Elements of Narrative First Confirmed at the Stage of the Cheonnyeonsa
Within the extent confirmed to date, there are three elements that are absent from earlier documents and newly appear in the main text of the Cheonnyeonsa. The first is the account of the deathbed visit. The sentence on p. 557, "The eight characters Gajeon chunghyo, sesu ingyeong (loyalty and filial piety handed down in the family; benevolence and reverence kept through the generations), which King Sejong the Great, coming in person to visit him in his illness at his deathbed, bestowed as his own composition in his own hand (어제어필), became the family precept that our Jeonui Yi surname keeps from generation to generation," is the earliest sentence confirmed to date that carries a narrative of the deathbed scene, which was confirmed nowhere in the Sillok obituary notice (1439), the haengnok, the memorial of 1722, the postface of the Gapsul edition, or the 1990 Publication Address (Chapter Ⅲ, Section 6, item A). The second is the term '어제어필 (御製御筆; royally composed and in the king's own hand)'. It appears on the same p. 557, and p. 572 gives the expression of the quoted document as '친제어필 (親製御筆).' The third is that the arrangement of detailed dates (the royal order of special promotion on the 8th day of the fourth month; the royal edict and the bestowal of the staff and armrest on the 26th day of the fourth month; the banquet honoring his parent on the 4th day of the fifth month) differs from the Sillok articles (the royal edict on the 25th day of the fourth month; the memorial of thanks on the 3rd day of the fifth month) (Chapter Ⅲ, Section 6, item C).
Here, however, two propositions must be strictly distinguished. 'First confirmed in the Cheonnyeonsa' and 'first made by the Cheonnyeonsa' are not the same proposition. Since p. 572 explicitly quotes the Nongsujip (聾叟集) as the source for the deathbed account and for 親製御筆, the possibility remains open that these elements are not an addition at the stage of the compilation of the Cheonnyeonsa but go back to that quoted document. Until the physical Nongsujip is identified, the agent who devised these elements and the time of their formation cannot be specified, and materials that would attribute them to a particular author are likewise not confirmed to date. What can be settled is only the lower bound — 1999 at the latest.
The roster on p. 1133 secured in the 9th revision narrowed the 'scope' of the attribution of authorship of these pages to the lead author Tae-ho and the author Jong-gwan of the Lineage History of the Seonbu Jeonseogong Branch. This narrowing, however, does not dissolve the distinction between the two propositions above. For the boundary of the division between the two persons is not settled, p. 572 itself explicitly quotes the Nongsujip, and it is confirmed by the Editor's Afterword that the final text passed through the chief writer's editorial judgment. Accordingly, 'who is explicitly named as the person responsible for writing that part' has been settled, but 'who originated that narrative' still remains an open question that hangs on the identification of the Nongsujip.
7. Interim Conclusions and Verification Tasks
The interim conclusions of this chapter are as follows. The compilation organization of the Cheonnyeonsa is confirmed by the text of the Publication Address as a structure of divided labor among the publisher (Yi Jong-gwan), the publication committee chair (Yi Dae-seon), the editorial committee chair (Yi Yong-ho), the branch authors (Yi Yong-ho, Yi Jun-sang, Yi Tae-ho), review (four persons), and supervision of the full text (Yi Jong-gwan); and with the roster on p. 1133, the Editor's Afterword, and the colophon added by the 9th revision, the whole picture of the compilation organization (review committee chair Heung-se; general arrangement and editing Tae-ho; proofreading Tae-se; the authors of each part) and even the edition history (first edition June 1, 1999; enlarged edition April 30, 2002) have been settled. Accordingly, the proposition that publisher and author are distinguished both on the face of the text and conceptually is maintained, but in the case of Yi Jong-gwan it has been newly confirmed that he held both positions — being the publisher and also explicitly named as author of Part 1 and of the Lineage History of the Seonbu Jeonseogong Branch. His role is confirmed by primary text as far as publication, supervision of the full text, arrangement of the portion on the settlement history of the Ochang lineage, authorship of the 1990 Publication Address, and explicit naming as author of Part 1 and of the Lineage History of the Seonbu Jeonseogong Branch; he is not named in the roster under the items of editing (Tae-ho) and proofreading (Tae-se); and whether he attended meetings is not confirmed to date. The deathbed account and '어제어필 (御製御筆)' are first confirmed in the main text of the Cheonnyeonsa, but until the quoted document, the Nongsujip, is identified, their origin is an open question.
The verification tasks are as follows. ⑴ Physical confirmation of the appended matter at the front and end of the Cheonnyeonsa — with the 9th revision the compilation roster (p. 1133), the Editor's Afterword (pp. 1134–1135), and the colophon have been secured, and only the Issuance Address (발간사; including whether it exists) remains. ⑴′ Collation of the first edition (1999) and the enlarged edition (2002) — confirmation of the edition to which the pages cited in this study belong and of movements of text between the two editions (new). ⑵ Investigation of the minutes and bulletins of the Clan Association (especially those for 1997–1999); ⑶ confirmation of whether the manuscripts submitted by the branches survive; ⑷ identification of the physical Nongsujip; ⑸ a search for 李鍾寬 in directories of the legal profession and the official gazette; ⑹ confirmation of the prefaces and postfaces and the rosters of compilation committee members of the daedongbo (comprehensive genealogy); ⑺ a complete collation of the whole of the Cheonnyeonsa with the preceding documents.
Ⅵ. The Reception History of "Gajeon chunghyo, sesu ingyeong" — The Process of Its Establishment as the Representative Family Precept
1. Setting the Question
'When were the eight characters recorded' (origin) and 'how did they come to be established as the representative family precept' (reception) are different questions. If Chapters Ⅲ and Ⅳ dealt with the former question, this chapter deals with the latter. The axis of examination is the medium. The chapter arranges in chronological order from when the eight characters appear in which media — the front matter of genealogies, seowon documents, official documents, the press, epigraphs, publications, public monuments, documents posted by the clan — while distinguishing the state of confirmation of each item (physically confirmed / text confirmed / reproduced in press reports / unverified).
2. Chronological Arrangement — The Development Confirmed by Medium
| Period | Medium | Aspect confirmed | Layer of origin / state of confirmation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Before 1754 | Genealogy front matter (the 'old genealogy') | The eight characters printed; origin of the handwriting not indicated (testimony of the postface of the Gapsul edition) | ⑶ Genealogical record. Identification of the old genealogy unresolved |
| 1574 (tentative) | Article at the head of the genealogy (Samjoseol) | Set down in writing as 'handwritten by King Sejong the Great' | ⑶ Genealogical record. Original unverified |
| Formed 1509–1754 | Document of seowon tradition (haengnok) | Documentation of the narrative of the bestowal of the handwriting | ⑷ Lineage and seowon tradition. Text secured |
| 1722 | Official document | The full eight characters and 'royal calligraphy (어필)' carried in a memorial by Confucian scholars | ⑵ Later official record. Original text secured |
| 1754 | Genealogy front matter (Gapsul edition) | States its source and judges it to be King Sejong's handwriting; carries a re-traced copy (重模) of the tracing — formalization at the level of the clan | ⑶ Genealogical record. Original text of the postface secured |
| 1937 | Newspaper and scholarly journal | Report of the 'discovery of the royal calligraphy of King Sejong the Great' — entry into popular discourse outside the clan | Modern press report. Confirmed |
| 1975/76 | Restoration of the seowon | Physical restoration of the seat of the tradition | Contemporary. One-year discrepancy in the date unresolved |
| 1978–79 | Epigraph (memorial stele) | Engraved as 'wrote it for him in person' (the handwriting line). The ritual seat of a lineage displaced from its home region | ⑸ Modern clan. Text secured |
| 1990 | Publication in Korean translation | The 'bestowal of a personal writing' described in the Publication Address of the Korean translation of the Gyeongsujip | ⑸ Modern clan. Text secured |
| After 1997 | Public monument (Ppuri Park, Daejeon) | The deathbed and royal-calligraphy narrative and the designation 'family precept' carried in the account of origins on the back of the Jeonui Yi clan monument (title of the work: "Ingyeong"). Two of the eight characters adopted as the title of the work | ⑸ Modern / public space. Text confirmed through reproduction in press reports; on-site inspection needed |
| 1999 | Comprehensive clan history (the Cheonnyeonsa) | "became the family precept kept from generation to generation" — explicit text designating it the 'representative family precept' (upper bound as currently confirmed) | ⑸ Modern compilation. Physical copy secured |
| After 2005 | Digital bibliographic notes by public institutions | Note on the artifact (traced copy), with the assessment 'considered to be a tracing.' An account of borrowing by another family | Scholarly and public views |
| After 2022 | Document posted by the clan | "The History of Our Family Precept" (「우리 가훈의 내력」) — the eight characters posted on the front; designated '어제어필 (royally composed and in the king's own hand)' | ⑷ Lineage tradition. Physical copy secured |
Among these, the item newly confirmed in the 8th revision is the public monument. The Jeonui Yi clan monument erected in Ppuri Park, Jung-gu, Daejeon (opened November 1997) bears the title "Ingyeong (仁敬)" (sculptor Cheon Jong-gwon), and is a case in which the last two of the eight characters were adopted as the title of a public monument representing the surname. The account of origins on the back, as reproduced in a press report, states to the effect that around the time of Yi Jeong-gan's deathbed King Sejong came in person and granted the royal calligraphy of the eight characters, and that the clan has since taken them as its family precept; and in a separate paragraph the expression "after [he was] honored with a commemorative gate (旌閭)" by the eight characters is also confirmed.77 This text serves as material for the reception history in three respects. First, it shows that the narrative of the deathbed-account line became established, beyond publications internal to the clan, as a posted text in public space — this corroborates that the deathbed account was circulating as the official narrative of the clan in the period around the publication of the Cheonnyeonsa (1999); second, it settles that a medium introducing the characters to visitors from outside the clan as 'the family precept of the Jeonui Yi clan' existed by this period at the latest; and third, the expression '旌閭' is a variation peculiar to this posted text, confirmed nowhere in the Sillok or the documents of the tradition, and is a further case of the pattern in which expressions are reassembled each time the medium changes. However, the date of installation of the monument is not stated in the report, so that only the range — after the opening of Ppuri Park (1997) — is specified, and it is a matter to be settled by on-site inspection.
3. Examination by Type of Medium and the Unverified Areas
The types of media confirmed, in summary, are: genealogy front matter (from the 'old genealogy' of before the mid-18th century at the latest; after 1754, inclusion of the tracing), seowon documents and spaces of sacrificial rites (17th–18th centuries), official document (1722, entered once), modern press (1937), epigraph (1979), publication in Korean translation (1990), public monument (after 1997), comprehensive clan history (1999), document posted by the clan (2022), and digital bibliographic notes by public institutions (after 2005). For the genealogies, however, whether inclusion in the front matter continued in each edition after 1754 (revised editions and daedongbo) has not been collated edition by edition.
By contrast, for the following media neither a physical object nor a text has been confirmed in this investigation to date: ⑴ name boards (seowon lecture hall, ritual house, head house of the lineage); ⑵ folding screens; ⑶ hanging scrolls and works of calligraphy; ⑷ use at clan events (posting or recitation in the ritual programs, ritual prayer texts, and ceremonial texts of the tomb rite for the founding ancestor and the sacrificial rite for Lord Hyojeong); ⑸ educational materials (materials for the education of youth and for education in reverence for ancestors by the Clan Association and the lineage organizations); ⑹ bulletins and newsletters. This does not mean that there was no use in these media, but that the materials for determining whether and when they were used have not yet been investigated. The design of the investigation is as follows. First, inspect on site the name boards of the lecture hall and ritual house of Songcheon Seowon and decipher their dates of making and seals. Second, catalog the folding screens and hanging scrolls held by the Clan Association Headquarters and the head house. Third, examine the ritual programs and ritual prayer texts of the tomb rite for the founding ancestor and the sacrificial rite for Lord Hyojeong to confirm whether the eight characters are posted or recited. Fourth, collect the bulletins and educational materials of the Clan Association in chronological order. Fifth, investigate the posted materials in the offices and ritual houses of the lineage organization of each branch.
4. The Time of Formation of the Perception of a 'Representative Family Precept' — A Layered Determination
The sources do not permit answering with a single point in time the question 'from when did the perception that this is the representative family precept in current use spread.' Layered by medium, it is as follows. ⑴ The practice of posting in the genealogy front matter goes back to the stage of the 'old genealogy' attested by the postface of the Gapsul edition, that is, to before the mid-18th century at the latest (if that old genealogy is identified, it may go back further). ⑵ For formalization at the level of the clan, the nodal point is the Gapsul edition of 1754, which stated its source and carried the tracing. ⑶ Entry into public discourse outside the clan is 1722 by the criterion of entry in an official record, and the report of 1937 by the criterion of popular discourse. ⑷ For text with the explicit designation 'family precept,' within the extent currently confirmed, p. 557 of the Cheonnyeonsa of 1999 ("became the family precept kept from generation to generation") is the upper bound, and text introducing it in public space as 'the family precept of the Jeonui Yi clan' is confirmed in the account of origins of the Ppuri Park monument (installed after 1997; the text confirmed by a report of 2011). Since for the documents of the earlier stages (haengnok, postface, memorial), which only transmit the eight characters as a narrative of bestowal, whether they use the designating term 'family precept' is not confirmed on the basis of the original texts, the time of appearance of the designating term remains a separate task of textual collation. In short, reception is not a single event but a process accumulated by changing media — genealogy front matter → seowon → entry in an official record → modern press report → epigraph → publication in Korean translation → public monument → comprehensive clan history → document posted by the clan — and it is accurate only when described with the state of confirmation of each stage distinguished.
Ⅶ. Reconstructing the Stemma of Transmission (Stemma Codicum) of "Gajeon chunghyo, sesu ingyeong"
1. Purpose and Method of the Chapter — An Application of Manuscript Stemmatics
This chapter rearranges within a single line of descent the documents examined individually in Chapters Ⅲ–Ⅵ above. The method applies the principle of the stemma (stemma codicum), which has been used in Western philology to reconstruct the genealogy of the copying of manuscripts, but transfers its object from the genealogy of the letter forms (字形) of manuscripts to the genealogy by which a single narrative — 'King Sejong wrote the eight characters and bestowed them' — was transmitted and transformed from document to document.78 That is, it reconstructs on a single diagram which document quoted which document, in which document which element first appears, and at which point the terminology branches or is elevated.
The principles of reconstruction are the following four. First, relations in which the direction of quotation is verified by the text (e.g., the quotation of the haengnok in the postface of the Gapsul edition) and probable presumption from shared elements (e.g., the relation between the memorial of 1722 and the haengnok) are marked distinctly. Second, for documents whose originals have not been confirmed (the Mallyeok edition, the Sungjeong edition, etc.), 'original unverified' is noted each time, and that node is provisional. Third, since the stemma is a provisional reconstruction drawn only from 'the sources confirmed to date,' it is designed as an open structure in which, if the originals of the Mallyeok or Sungjeong editions or the original of the haengnok held by the seowon are discovered, only the node concerned need be replaced or supplemented. Fourth, no node of the stemma implies a determination as to whether the bestowal of the royal calligraphy was a fact. What the stemma reconstructs is the genealogy of the records, not whether the event actually occurred.
2. The Stemma of Transmission
The line of transmission according to the sources confirmed to date is reconstructed as follows. Verified relations of quotation are distinguished as '⇒ (verified)' and probable presumptions as '→ (probable).'
[Layer 1: Contemporary and near-contemporary 15th-c. sources --- absence of any record of the eight characters or royal calligraphy]
Sejong sillok: royal edict (1432.4.25) · memorial of thanks (1432.5.3) · obituary notice (1439)
↓
"Tomb Marker of Lady Kim, Jeong-daebuin" (1445, composed by Yi Yang-gan) --- praise of the family's model conduct; no eight characters
↓
Spirit-path stele (1456, composed by Yi Seo-jang) --- lists only 褒書·超陞·几杖·酒樂 (full text deciphered)
↓
Gyeongsujip congratulatory poems (formed c. 1432, first printed 1509) --- no eight characters within the extent confirmed
↓
····· (documentary gap of about 120 years) ·····
[Layer 2: Genealogy · seowon · official record --- formation of the attribution and coexistence of terms]
Mallyeok edition "Samjoseol" (1574, original unverified): '手書 of King Sejong the Great' (reported)
←(appended note) 手書 of Lord Cheonggang, Yi Je-sin
↓ (probable)
Sungjeong edition (崇禎譜, 1634): manner of inclusion unverified
↓ (probable)
"Record of Conduct of Lord Hyojeong, Songcheon Seowon" (formed 1509–1754): the term '手書'
├─→(probable: shared tradition of the Cheongju Confucian community)
│ Seungjeongwon ilgi, 1722.7.18, memorial of Cheongju Confucian scholars: the term '御筆'
│ (first in the official record; itself states that it is quoting a tradition)
└─⇒(verified: quotation of the text "世宗大王手書賜...八字")
Gapsul edition, postface by Yi Jing-guk (1754): '手書·特賜'; 重模 in the front matter
※ Seungjeongwon ilgi, 1773.4.3 (bestowal of staff and armrest on Yi Jing-seong): no mention of royal calligraphy
--- the standard of the narrative in which the court is the agent is consistently the staff and armrest
[Layer 3: Modern publication]
1937 Yi Geuk-ro's confirmation of the physical genealogy front matter
⇒ Dong-A Ilbo report ("Discovery of the Royal Calligraphy of King Sejong the Great") · Hangeul (『한글』), no. 5
--- '御筆' made a headline and a popular term
[Layer 4: Contemporary arrangement and elevation]
1990 Publication Address of the Korean translation of the Gyeongsujip (Yi Jong-gwan): '親書 下賜'
↓
1999 Jeonui Yean Yi-ssi cheonnyeonsa, first edition: deathbed visit · '御製御筆'
←(quotation) Nongsujip (聾叟集) '親製御筆' (identification of physical copy unknown)
←(reproduction) haengnok · spirit-path stele inscription · tomb marker · memorial stele inscription · 1990 Publication Address
↓
2002 Cheonnyeonsa, enlarged edition (movement of text from the first edition unverified)
↓
Contemporary clan materials: "The History of Our Family Precept" (after 2022; inherits '御製御筆')
· account of origins of the Ppuri Park monument (deathbed-account line + '旌閭')The structural features that this stemma shows are three.
The first is discontinuity. Between Layer 1 and Layer 2 there is a documentary gap of about 120 years, and across this gap the presence or absence of records concerning the eight characters divides. In no document before the gap are the eight characters confirmed, and they first appear in the documents of the clan and Confucian-community lines after the gap.
The second is branching. In Layer 2 the same narrative was documented in two lines of terminology. The clan and seowon line (the haengnok and the postface of the Gapsul edition) consistently uses 'handwritten (手書),' while the line of the Confucian community's entry into the official record (the memorial of 1722) uses 'royal calligraphy (御筆).' Since the two lines share elements such as the story of Lao Laizi (노래자), the full eight characters, and the bestowal of a banquet (賜宴), there is a probability that they are two branches of documentation of the same tradition of the Cheongju Confucian community and clan (Chapter Ⅹ, item ⑥), but the only trunk line in which the direction of quotation is verified by the text is the one from the haengnok ⇒ the postface of the Gapsul edition.
The third is confluence and elevation. From the modern period on, the two lines of terminology converge on 'royal calligraphy (어필)' by way of its use as a headline in the report of 1937, and at the stage of contemporary arrangement (1990 'personal writing (친서)' → 1999 'royally composed and in the king's own hand (어제어필)') it is elevated to an expression of the highest grade. Each node of the elevation is distinguished from the others at the level of the original texts (Chapters Ⅲ and Ⅳ), and it is the terminological principle of this study that a higher expression must not retroactively replace a lower one.
3. Basic Information on Each Document and Its Citation Relationships
The basic information on the document corresponding to each node of the stemma is set out below. The source grades follow the classification in Chapter Ⅰ, Section 2.
| Document (date of composition) | Author | Source grade | Purpose of composition / conditions of observation | Cited authority (as confirmed in the wording) |
| Sejong sillok, royal edict of commendation (1432.4.25) | Grade 1 | Royal edict of commendation / contemporary record | ||
| Sejong sillok (世宗實錄, Veritable Records of King Sejong), memorial of thanks (1432.5.3) | Yi Jeong-gan | Grade 1 | Expression of thanks / the party concerned | Response to the royal edict |
| Sejong sillok obituary notice (1439.9.27) | Court historian | Grade 1 | Obituary notice / contemporary | Retrospect of the 1432 commendation |
| Tomb marker of Lady Kim, Jeongdaebuin (1445) | Yi Yang-gan (son) | Equivalent to Grade 1 | Tomb marker / family, contemporary | — |
| Spirit-path stele (1456) | Yi Seo-jang (grandson) | Grade 2 (close to the event) | Spirit-path stele inscription / family, near generation | Reflects the content of the royal edict (褒書, 几杖, etc.) |
| Gyeongsujip congratulatory poems (composed around 1432, first printed 1509) | Gwon Hong, Maeng Sa-seong, Hwang Hui, Yu Gwan, and others | Equivalent to Grade 2 (composite of edition layers) | Congratulatory verse and prose / composed in the period, later editions | Sing of the royal edict, the staff and armrest, and the music |
| Mallyeok edition Samjoseol (1574) | Yi Je-sin | Grade 3 (original unverified) | Entry in the opening volume of the genealogy / 142 years after the death | Unknown (original unverified) |
| Sungjeong edition (崇禎譜, 1634) | Unknown | Grade 3 (unverified) | Genealogy / posthumous | Unknown |
| Seowon haengnok (academy record of conduct; composed 1509–1754) | Unknown (academy, clan) | Grade 4 | Record of conduct / posthumous | Reflects the classical allusions of the royal edict (崔鄲, 徐積); mentions the printing of the preface to the Gyeongsu poems |
| Seungjeongwon ilgi (承政院日記, Diaries of the Royal Secretariat), memorial (1722.7.18) | Bak Su-ham and other Confucian students of Cheongju (recorded by the Royal Secretariat) | Grade 2 (recorded in an official compilation; the content cites tradition) | Petition for a royal charter / 283 years after the death | States of itself, with ’州人至今艶稱之’, that it is a citation of tradition |
| Gapsul edition postface (1754) | Yi Jing-guk | Grade 2 (original text secured) | Genealogy postface / posthumous | Expressly cites the haengnok and Cheonggang-gong's handwritten note (firmly established) |
| Seungjeongwon ilgi (1773.4.3) | Royal Secretariat | Grade 1 (for the facts of 1773) | Record of the bestowal of staff and armrest / contemporary (1773) | — (no mention of royal calligraphy) |
| Dong-A Ilbo and Hangeul no. 5 (1937) | Yi Geuk-ro, reporter | Grade 5 | News report, scholarly journal / physical object examined | Physical object at the head of the genealogy; record in the haengnok |
| Publication preface to the Korean translation of the Gyeongsujip (1990) | Yi Jong-gwan | Grade 5 | Publication preface / posthumous | Prior clan tradition |
| Cheonnyeonsa (Thousand-Year History), first printing (1999) and enlarged edition (2002) | Clan Association (chief writer Yi Tae-ho and others; see Chapter Ⅴ) | Grade 5 | Clan history / posthumous | Reproduction of the haengnok, spirit-path stele text, tomb marker, memorial-site stele inscription, and 1990 publication preface + citation of the Nongsujip |
| "The History of Our Family Precept" (after 2022) | Clan | Grade 3 (clan tradition) | Internal document / posthumous | Confirmation of the 1722 Seungjeongwon ilgi entry; continues the 1999-lineage account |
4. Comparative Table of Tradition Elements — Presence or Absence by Document
The presence or absence, document by document, of the six core elements that make up the tradition — ⑴ the eight characters themselves, ⑵ King Sejong's handwriting (手書), ⑶ royal calligraphy (御筆), ⑷ royal composition in the king's own hand (御製御筆), ⑸ the deathbed visit, ⑹ the explicit designation as a 'family precept' — is judged as follows. ○ means that presence is confirmed in the wording; × means that absence is confirmed in the wording; ▲ means provisional, on the basis of a report or hearsay (傳聞) (original unverified); ― means that no judgment is possible (document unverified, or not applicable).
| Document | The eight characters | 手書 | 御筆 | 御製 御筆 | Deathbed visit | Designation as family precept | Element first confirmed in this document |
| Sillok royal edict and memorial of thanks (1432) | × | × | × | × | — | × | (the facts of the special promotion, the staff and armrest, and the royal edict) |
| Sillok obituary notice (1439) | × | × | × | × | × | × | — |
| Tomb marker (1445) | × | × | × | × | — | × | — |
| Spirit-path stele (1456) | × | × | × | × | × | × | — |
| Gyeongsujip congratulatory poems (extent confirmed) | × | × | × | × | — | × | — |
| Mallyeok edition Samjoseol (1574) | ▲ | ▲ | — | — | — | — | Attribution to King Sejong (earliest as reported; provisional) |
| Sungjeong edition (1634) | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Seowon haengnok (1509–1754) | ○ | ○ | × | × | × | × | Wording of the handwriting narrative (earliest on the basis of confirmed original text) |
| Seungjeongwon ilgi memorial (1722) | ○ | × | ○ | × | × | × | The term ‘御筆’ (the only premodern instance); entry into an official document |
| Gapsul edition postface (1754) | ○ | ○ | × | × | × | × | Formalization at the clan level; explicit statement of the cited authorities |
| Seungjeongwon ilgi (1773) | × | × | × | × | — | × | (corroborates that the court's point of reference was the staff and armrest) |
| 1937 news report and Hangeul no. 5 | ○ | — | ○ | × | × | × | ’Royal calligraphy’ made a headline and popularized |
| 1990 publication preface to the Korean translation | ○ | ○(親書) | — | × | × | — | ’Bestowal of a personally written text’ put into a modern official document |
| Cheonnyeonsa (1999) | ○ | ○ | ○ | ○ | ○ | ○ | Royal composition in the king's own hand, the deathbed visit, and the designation as ‘family precept’ (all the upper limit of confirmation) |
| "The History of Our Family Precept" (after 2022) | ○ | — | ○ | ○ | — | ○ | Reconfirmation of the 1722 entry |
5. Table of Changes in Tradition Elements — Chronology of First Appearance
If the comparative table above is inverted to take the elements as its basis, it becomes a chronology of the document in which each element is first confirmed. A distinction is drawn between 'on the basis of confirmed original text' and 'upper limit as reported (including unverified originals)'.
| Tradition element | Earliest document on the basis of confirmed original text | Upper limit as reported (provisional) |
| The eight characters themselves | Seowon haengnok (composed 1509–1754) and Seungjeongwon ilgi (1722) | Opening volume of the Mallyeok edition (1574), and the printing at the head of the ‘old genealogy’ attested by the Gapsul edition postface (edition unknown) |
| Attribution to King Sejong; 手書 | Seowon haengnok (composed 1509–1754) | Mallyeok edition Samjoseol (1574) |
| 御筆 | Seungjeongwon ilgi memorial of 1722.7.18 (the only premodern instance) | — |
| Popularization of 御筆 | Dong-A Ilbo and Hangeul no. 5 (1937) | — |
| 親書 | Publication preface to the Korean translation of the Gyeongsujip (1990) | — |
| 御製御筆 | Cheonnyeonsa, p. 557 (1999) | ‘親製御筆’ in the Nongsujip (if the citation is accurate; identification of the physical book unknown) |
| Deathbed visit | Cheonnyeonsa, p. 557 (1999) | Nongsujip (identification unknown) |
| Explicit designation as ‘family precept’ | Cheonnyeonsa (1999, upper limit of confirmation) | — |
| Perception as the representative family precept | Not a single point in time but layers (Chapter Ⅵ, Section 4): practice of placing it at the head of the genealogy (before the mid-18th century) → public discourse (1722, 1937) → explicit codification (1999) | — |
What this chronology establishes is the order of appearance of the elements, not the time of origin of each element. Every 'first confirmation' is not a 'first occurrence' but a 'first confirmation in the extant sources', and each upper limit may be pushed back at any time, depending on the identification of the documents whose originals are unverified.
6. The Methodological Status of the 'Silence of the Sources'
The judgment for the first layer of the stemma — that the eight characters are not confirmed in the 15th-century sources — amounts to what is called an argument from silence (argumentum ex silentio), and its methodological status therefore needs to be made clear separately.79
The principle is as follows. Silence is not in itself evidence. From the mere fact that a document did not record a certain matter, it cannot be inferred that the matter did not exist. This is because the reasons for its not being recorded may be countless. In the methodology of history, however, the conditions under which silence is raised to a historical circumstance have been discussed, and they may be summarized broadly as the following three. ⑴ The document in question must be of a genre and purpose from which a record of the matter is strongly expected; ⑵ the document in question must have been transmitted intact, so that the possibility of loss or excision is controlled; ⑶ several mutually independent documents must show the same silence.
Applied to the present case, the result is as follows. First, as to condition ⑴. The memorial of thanks is a document giving thanks for the favor received; the spirit-path stele inscription is a genre that enumerates the particulars of favors for display; and the Gyeongsujip congratulatory poems are celebratory poems in which the eminent ministers of the day vied in singing the particulars of the favors. These are the places where, had there been a bestowal of royal calligraphy, a record of it would be most strongly expected. In particular, the spirit-path stele inscription actually enumerates the particulars 褒書, 超陞, 几杖, and 酒樂, while leaving out only the eight characters. Second, as to condition ⑵. The three Sillok entries are confirmed in full text in the official database; the spirit-path stele inscription was deciphered across its entire extent of preface, lineage, and verse inscription in the 7th revision; and the original text and translation of the tomb marker have also been confirmed. The Gyeongsujip, however, is a composite of layers in which 40 of the 57 yeongyeon poems had already been lost at the time of the first printing, so it meets this condition only in part, and the weight of its silence must be discounted to that extent. Third, as to condition ⑶. Documents by different authoring parties — the Sillok (official compilation), the tomb marker (family), the spirit-path stele (family), and the Gyeongsujip (officials of the day) — show the same silence.
Accordingly, the silence of the 15th-century sources can be assessed not as a mere accidental gap but as a historical circumstance that meets the conditions to a considerable extent. A circumstance, however, is only a circumstance. This silence cannot serve as a ground for the conclusion that 'there was no bestowal of royal calligraphy', and this study does not use it as a ground for such a conclusion. What the silence establishes is not the absence of the event but only the fact that the absence of 15th-century documentation is confirmed up to the present. This is consistent with the conclusion of this study — that whether the bestowal of royal calligraphy itself was a fact has been neither confirmed nor denied up to the present.
7. Summary
The stemma and comparative tables of this chapter add no new facts. They merely rearrange on a single line of descent the facts confirmed individually in Chapters Ⅲ–Ⅵ. Through this rearrangement, however, something comes into view for the first time. It is that the tradition is not a single straight line but a line of transmission with a structure of rupture (a gap of 120 years), divergence (the two terminological lines of 手書 and 御筆), and confluence and elevation (the convergence since the modern period and the rise to 御製御筆), and that each node of that line can be reconstructed with firmly established citation relationships and probable presumptions, and confirmation in the original text and provisional status as reported, kept strictly distinct. This stemma is not a closed conclusion but an open framework. The moment the originals of the Mallyeok and Sungjeong editions, the original haengnok held by the academy, or the physical copy of the Nongsujip is confirmed, the node concerned need only be replaced or supplemented, and even then the framework itself will stand.
Ⅷ. Modern and Contemporary Clan Administration and Changes in the Structure of Conflict
[Publication withheld] This chapter deals with modern and contemporary clan administration and the structure of conflict, and it includes matters on which related proceedings are currently under way and analysis of documents bearing real names. Accordingly, its publication is withheld in the Public Edition, and it is to be made public as a separate volume after the proceedings have concluded. The chapter number is retained for correspondence with the full edition. The principles of exposition for this chapter (the distinction among fact, circumstance, testimony, and the unverified; the exclusion of conclusions as to motive) are summarized in the Explanatory Notes.
Ⅸ. Chronological Summary
| Year | Matter |
| 1360 | Birth of Yi Jeong-gan. Tenth-generation descendant of Yi Do (李棹), founder of the Jeonui Yi clan (also written as the 11th generation, depending on the method of reckoning the lineage). |
| 1432. 4. 25 | King Sejong specially appoints Yi Jeong-gan Jaheon daebu and Jungchuwonsa, bestows a staff and armrest, and issues a royal edict commending his filial conduct. [Sejong sillok] |
| 1432. 5. 3 | Yi Jeong-gan submits a memorial of thanks. No mention of royal calligraphy. [Sejong sillok] |
| 1439 | Death of Yi Jeong-gan. Posthumous title Hyojeong (孝靖). |
| 1456 | Spirit-path stele erected. The passage on King Sejong's commendation (original text confirmed from the excerpt on p. 570 of the Cheonnyeonsa) describes only 褒書, 超陞, 几杖, and 酒樂; no mention of royal calligraphy. Collation of the full text is a task for follow-up. |
| 1476 | Seonghwa draft genealogy (compiled by Yi Ha; in the form of a draft genealogy; original not transmitted). |
| 1509 | First printing of the Gyeongsujip (4th year of King Jungjong; by the great-great-grandson Yi Gye-bok, Lord Jeonpyeong). Already at the time of the first printing, 40 of the 57 yeongyeon poems had been lost. |
| Between 1509 and 1754 | Composition of the "Hyojeong-gong Songcheon Seowon haengnok" (upper limit fixed by its mention of the printing of the preface to the Gyeongsu poems, lower limit by its citation in the Gapsul edition postface). The wording '世宗大王手書賜…八字' secured (transcription included in the Cheonnyeonsa). |
| 1574 | Mallyeok edition published (compiled 1574, preface and postface 1575). Directed by three persons, Tak, Hae-su, and Je-sin, with the cooperation of An-ro; woodblock edition in a single volume (history of the Bujeong-gong branch). The Samjoseol in the opening volume records 'handwriting of King Sejong the Great' (on the basis of a news report). 現無傳 --- can be confirmed indirectly through the prefaces and postfaces reproduced in the opening volume of the Gapsul edition. |
| 1634 | Sungjeong edition published. Directed by the brothers Gu-jun and Myeong-jun and by Yi Hu-gi, magistrate of Yeongcheon; woodblock edition in 2 volumes in all; 'oldest extant edition, extremely rare' (history of the Bujeong-gong branch). The manner in which the eight characters are included is unverified --- confirming the whereabouts of a physical copy is the highest-priority task for on-site examination. |
| 1682 | Second printing of the Gyeongsujip (8th year of King Sukjong; by Jeong Si-seong, a descendant through a daughter's line, and Yi Man-bong, a collateral 8th-generation descendant). |
| 1695?/1706? | Founding at Cheongju (Songcheon village, Hwanhui-ri, Oksan-myeon, Cheongwon-gun) of the shrine to seven worthies including Yi Jeong-gan (Songcheon Seowon). The bibliographic notes and p. 573 of the Cheonnyeonsa give its founding as 1695 (21st year of King Sukjong, eulhae; the Western year 1696 given alongside in the Cheonnyeonsa is a conversion error) and the grant of a royal charter as 1711, but the 1722 memorial states of itself that it was founded 丙戌年間 (presumed 1706) and had not received a royal charter. The dates do not agree; reexamination is needed. |
| 1722. 7. 18 | Bak Su-ham and other yuhak of Cheongju submit a memorial petitioning for a royal charter for the shrine to the seven worthies and for the additional enshrinement of Yi Je-sin, Choe Seok-jeong, and Yi In-hyeok. In the passage on Yi Jeong-gan, the statement that the king 'wrote in royal calligraphy the eight large characters 家傳忠孝世守仁敬 and commended him' — the first confirmed instance of the expression 'royal calligraphy' in the official records. The royal reply was that the Ministry of Rites should deliberate and dispose of the matter. [Seungjeongwon ilgi] |
| 1723 | Additional enshrinement of Yi Je-sin and others at Songcheon Seowon (3rd year of King Gyeongjong). |
| 1754 | Gapsul edition recompiled. Postface by Yi Jing-guk (original text secured): the 8 characters were printed at the head of the old genealogy with no indication of the origin of the handwriting → on the authority of the Seowon haengnok and Cheonggang-gong's handwritten note, judged to be King Sejong's '手書·特賜' and included at the head of the volume in a tracing copy (重模). The expression 御筆 does not appear in the original text. A copy presumed to be the physical edition is confirmed as held in the Jangseogak (K2-1782, compiled by Yi Deok-yong and others, wooden movable-type edition, 10 gwon in 10 volumes), with original-text images made public --- collation with the transcription is not complete. |
| 1773. 4. 3 | King Yeongjo receives in audience Yi Jing-seong, tenth-generation descendant of Yi Jeong-gan and former Owijang, bestows a staff and armrest, and appoints him, as sole nominee, to a specially created post of Jijungchubusa. No mention of royal calligraphy. [Seungjeongwon ilgi] |
| 1871 | Songcheon Seowon demolished (decree abolishing the private academies). |
| 1918 | Third printing of the Gyeongsujip (by the 17th-generation descendant Yi Hak-ro, the 18th-generation descendant Yi Neung-se, and others). In the course of the three printings, King Sejong's 褒書 and the account of conduct were appended at the front and back, and part of the lost verse and prose was made up with writings by descendants. |
| 1937 | Yi Geuk-ro confirms the eight characters in a genealogy held by the family of Yi Jeong-ro. Dong-A Ilbo report "Royal Calligraphy of King Sejong the Great Discovered"; record in Hangeul no. 5. |
| 1975/1976 | Songcheon Seowon restored on the old site of Hyojeong-gong's Songcheon villa, west of Haengjeong (1975 according to the Cheonnyeonsa, 1976 according to the bibliographic notes). |
| 1990. 2 | Fourth printing of the Gyeongsujip, in Korean translation. Publication preface (Yi Jong-gwan, president of the Jeonseo-gong branch association and 19th-generation descendant of Hyojeong-gong): narrates the special appointment of the 4th month of 1432 as following the 'bestowal of a personally written text' of the eight characters. |
| May 30, 1997 | Publication of the Jeonui Yean Yissi cheonnyeonsa (Thousand-Year History of the Jeonui and Yean Yi Clans) approved at the 22nd regular general meeting of the Clan Association. Start of 24 months of compilation. |
| After November 1997 | Opening of Ppuri Park in Jung-gu, Daejeon. Thereafter, installation of the Jeonui Yi clan sculpture "Ingyeong (仁敬)" (date of installation unverified). The account of origins on the rear face includes the royal-calligraphy narrative of the deathbed-account lineage and the designation as 'family precept' (the wording is confirmed through its reproduction in a 2011 news report; on-site examination needed). |
| November 1, 1998 | Chief writer Yi Tae-ho begins writing the manuscript of the Cheonnyeonsa (editorial afterword. Pen laid down June 1, 1999; a full 7 months). |
| May 1999 | Foreword (Yi Jong-gwan) and publication preface (Yi Dae-seon) of the Cheonnyeonsa written. |
| June 1, 1999 | Jeonui Yean Yissi cheonnyeonsa printed and published (colophon. Clan Association Headquarters; publisher Yi Jong-gwan, editor Yi Dae-seon, compiler Yi Tae-ho). Includes the sections relating to Hyojeong-gong (from p. 555; the haengnok section on pp. 573–576 — includes the full classical Chinese text of the haengnok), the spirit-path stele inscription (p. 860), and others. The narrative of the deathbed visit and 'royal composition in the king's own hand (御製御筆)' appears on p. 557 of the main text (p. 572 cites the Nongsujip as its authority). Division of writing: Part 1, Jong-gwan; Parts 2–5, joint writing (Hui-ok, Jong-won, Yong-ho, Tae-ho); Part 6, history of the Seonbu Jeonseo-gong branch, lead writer Tae-ho, writer Jong-gwan (list on p. 1133). The chief writer's editorial afterword written on the same day. |
| April 30, 2002 | Enlarged edition of the Jeonui Yean Yissi cheonnyeonsa published (colophon). Whether the wording differs from the first printing is unverified (a task of collating the editions). |
| 2005 | Cheon Hye-bong makes public the calligraphy album "Sejong daewang eosa Huiujeong Hyoryeong daegun bangmun". A standard for comparison of handwriting appears. |
| October 2022 | Clan member Yong-seong (29th generation, Jungpa branch) confirms the 1722 entry in the Seungjeongwon ilgi. The circumstances of the find are appended to the clan document "The History of Our Family Precept", which designates the eight characters as 'royal composition in the king's own hand'. |
| Present | No official state recognition as royal calligraphy. The bibliographic notes of public institutions describe it as 'considered to be a tracing copy'. |
Ⅹ. Results of the Examination of the Core Questions
① The document in which the eight characters first appear
The document that first included the eight characters themselves cannot be determined. The postface of the Gapsul edition (1754) attests that the eight characters had already been printed at the head of the 'old genealogy' (original text secured), but which edition that old genealogy was has not been identified.80 Within the range confirmed up to the present, the earliest related record whose date of composition can be specified is the Samjoseol of the Mallyeok edition (1574), or the handwritten note of Cheonggang-gong appended after it (original unverified, provisional).
② The first appearance of a record that it is King Sejong's royal calligraphy
Within the range confirmed up to the present, the record of 'handwriting of King Sejong the Great' in the Samjoseol of the 1574 Mallyeok edition is the earliest (provisional, original unverified). This is about 142 years after the time of the event. If limited to records whose original text is directly confirmed, the entry of the 18th day of the 7th month of 1722 in the Seungjeongwon ilgi (承政院日記, Diaries of the Royal Secretariat) is the upper limit up to the present.81
③ The appearance of the expression 'royal calligraphy'
Within the range in which the original text is confirmed, the only premodern instance of 'royal calligraphy (御筆)' is the 1722 memorial of the Confucian students (recorded in the Seungjeongwon ilgi). The terms in the Seowon haengnok (full classical Chinese text secured in the 6th revision) and in the original text of the Gapsul edition postface are in both cases 'handwriting (手書)' and 'special bestowal (特賜)', and the attribution of 'royal calligraphy' to the postface has been confirmed to be a supplement made at the stage of modern Korean translation. As for 'royal composition in the king's own hand (御製御筆)', the earlier judgment (an addition at the stage of the clan documents after 2022) is revised: it appears at the latest in the main text of the 1999 Cheonnyeonsa (p. 557), and it has been confirmed that its origin may possibly go back to the literary collection cited by the Cheonnyeonsa ('chinje eopil', personally composed and in the king's own hand; reading of the book title unknown). The elevation of terms running from handwriting → royal calligraphy (1722, official compilation) → personally written text and royal calligraphy (1990 publication preface, modern Korean translation) → royal composition in the king's own hand (at the latest 1999 → after 2022) reflects the process of the institutionalization and modern ordering of the tradition, but the terms of each stage must be strictly distinguished on the basis of the original texts.
④ Whether the record of filial conduct and the record of the family precept are contemporaneous
They are not contemporaneous records. Whereas the commendation of filial conduct is confirmed by contemporary official sources of 1432, the attribution of the eight characters to King Sejong appears, within the range confirmed up to the present, in records from 1574 onward.
⑤ Whether there is content added in later periods
To conclude that it 'was added' goes beyond the range the sources allow. What can be confirmed is (1) that there is no record of royal calligraphy in the 15th-century sources (the three Sillok entries, the tomb marker, the full text of the spirit-path stele, and the confirmed congratulatory poems); (2) that it first appears in records from the latter half of the 16th century onward; and (3) that information about the person (age and the like) and embellishments ('the only handwriting' and the like) were amplified in the course of transmission. Neither the possibility that a bestowal of royal calligraphy actually took place but was not recorded, nor the possibility that the attribution was formed in a later period, is excluded by the present sources.
⑥ Comparison of the wording among the documents
As in the table in Chapter Ⅳ, the contemporary sources (the royal edict, the memorial of thanks, the obituary notice, the tomb marker, the full text of the spirit-path stele, and the confirmed Gyeongsujip congratulatory poems) speak only of the staff and armrest, the special promotion, the royal edict (褒書), and the music, and the further one moves into the later clan and academy records, the more the expression becomes concrete and elevated, from handwriting → royal calligraphy → royal composition in the king's own hand. The core of the differences among the documents lies in the fact that the Gapsul edition postface itself attests that 'the old genealogy had no explanation of the writer', and in the fact that the haengnok, while knowing accurately even the classical allusions of the royal edict (崔鄲, 徐積), placed at the opening of its narrative a bestowal of handwriting that is not in the royal edict. The memorial (1722) and the haengnok share the common elements of the Lao Laizi allusion, the full text of the eight characters, and the bestowed banquet (賜宴), yet differ in their term (御筆/手書), so there is a probability that they may be regarded as two branches of documentation within the same line of tradition of the Cheongju Confucian community and the clan.
⑦ The nature of the Seungjeongwon ilgi record — a citation of existing documents, or an independent record?
It is not an independent record but a citation of existing tradition. As a result of an exhaustive search by the search term '李貞幹', the related entries were determined to be two.82 The entry of the 18th day of the 7th month of 1722 records the memorial of the Cheongju Confucian students petitioning for a royal charter; the passage on royal calligraphy is a statement of local and Confucian-community tradition, which the memorial itself declares to be what 'the people of the district speak of to this day', and the royal reply too was not a confirmation of fact but a routine instruction for deliberation and disposal.83 The entry of the 3rd day of the 4th month of 1773 is a record of the bestowal of a staff and armrest on the descendant Yi Jing-seong and does not mention royal calligraphy.84 Since the Seungjeongwon ilgi of King Sejong's reign itself is not extant, an independent contemporary record structurally cannot exist.85 In short, the only entry in the Seungjeongwon ilgi that mentions royal calligraphy is a citation of tradition, and the point of reference of the entry in which the court was the acting party (1773) was the staff and armrest. The 1722 entry does, however, have the source value of establishing the point in time at which the royal-calligraphy tradition was entered in an official document and passed into public discourse. Additional searches by auxiliary search terms, and the tracing of entries on subsequent handling such as the implementation of the royal charter, are tasks that remain.
⑧ Whether the same content exists before the late Joseon period
It is not confirmed in the sources of early Joseon (15th century). The record of mid-Joseon (1574, Mallyeok edition) is the upper limit as reported (provisional), and the upper limit for which the original text is confirmed is 1722, at the threshold of late Joseon.
⑨ The role of the modern compilers
It is confirmed that Yi Geuk-ro's work of 1937 confirmed and made public existing materials (the record in the Seowon haengnok → the physical object at the head of the genealogy) and did not add a new authority. There is, however, an aspect in which the reporting frame of 'discovery' became the starting point for the later exaggerated popular accounts ('the only handwriting of King Sejong' and the like). At the stage of the modern ordering by the clan, the 1990 publication preface to the Korean translation of the Gyeongsujip (Yi Jong-gwan) put the narrative of the 'bestowal of a personally written text' into an official document, and the narrative of the deathbed visit and 'royal composition in the king's own hand (御製御筆)' appeared in the main text of the 1999 Cheonnyeonsa (the literary collection cited as its authority needs to be identified). The clan document after 2022 ("The History of Our Family Precept") is basically a confirmation and ordering of existing materials (including the confirmation of the Seungjeongwon ilgi entry), and its expression 'royal composition in the king's own hand' is confirmed to be a continuation of the account in the lineage of the official clan history of 1999. Determining the point at which the elements of expression not found in the original sources were first added is a follow-up task, to be verified by identifying the literary collection cited by the Cheonnyeonsa and by collating the wording edition by edition from the modern period onward.
Questions ⑩–⑰ below are questions relating to compilation and reception newly established in the 8th revision. The detailed analysis is in Chapters Ⅴ and Ⅵ; here only the answers are summarized.
⑩ What is the sentence first confirmed in the Cheonnyeonsa?
It is the sentence on the deathbed visit and royal composition in the king's own hand on p. 557 (Chapter Ⅴ, Section 6). It is, however, limited to 'is first confirmed', not 'was first added'. Since p. 572 cites the Nongsujip as its authority, the agent and time of its invention cannot be specified until that work is identified.
⑪ What expressions newly appear in the Cheonnyeonsa that are absent from earlier documents?
They are three elements: the deathbed-visit account, 'royal composition in the king's own hand (御製御筆)' (the expression in the cited document is 'chinje eopil'), and an arrangement of detailed dates that differs from the Sillok (Chapter Ⅴ, Section 6).
⑫ Which documents did the Cheonnyeonsa cite as they stood, and which parts did it newly edit?
It divides into a layer of reproduction (the haengnok, the spirit-path stele text, the tomb marker, the memorial-site stele inscription, and the 1990 publication preface) and a layer of main-text narration (around pp. 555–572). The layer of reproduction performed the function of preserving original texts, and the layer of main-text narration the function of synthesis and editing; the new elements are confirmed only in the latter (table and diagram in Chapter Ⅴ, Section 5).
⑬ How are the role of the publisher and the role of the writers distinguished?
The wording of the publication preface itself distinguishes them. The writing is by Yi Yong-ho (history of the early ancestors, Baekpa branch), Yi Jun-sang (Jungpa branch), and Yi Tae-ho (Gyepa branch); the publication and the review of the full text are by Yi Jong-gwan; and partial arrangement is separately stated on p. 579 (the history of the settlement of the Ochang lineage is by Jong-gwan). Publisher and writer are not the same concept. However, the list on p. 1133 secured in the 9th revision shows that Yi Jong-gwan is also expressly named as the writer of Part 1 and as 'writer' (named alongside lead writer Tae-ho) of the history of the Seonbu Jeonseo-gong branch in Part 6, so that, apart from the conceptual distinction, it is confirmed that one person can hold both positions and in fact did hold both. Even so, materials that would identify the author at the level of individual sections and sentences (the boundaries of the division of work, the manuscripts submitted, editorial records) are not confirmed up to the present (Chapter Ⅴ, Sections 2–4).
⑭ How did the expressions change within the clan after the Cheonnyeonsa?
"The History of Our Family Precept" (after 2022) continued 'royal composition in the king's own hand', and the account of origins on the public sculpture (wording confirmed 2011) added to the narrative of the deathbed-account lineage an expression of its own, 'jeongnyeo (旌閭)'. That is, the continuation of the Cheonnyeonsa-lineage account and its adaptation by medium proceed side by side (Chapter Ⅲ, Section 7; Chapter Ⅵ, Section 2).
⑮ From when were the expressions 'King Sejong's royal calligraphy' and 'King Sejong's handwriting' used interchangeably?
At the level of the original texts it is not interchangeable use but coexistence. Handwriting (手書) is the term of the haengnok and the Gapsul edition postface (1754), and royal calligraphy (御筆) is the term of the 1722 memorial (recorded in an official compilation); in the first half of the 18th century they coexisted in different lines of documents. The interchangeable use that attributes 'royal calligraphy' to the handwriting documents appears, within the range presently confirmed, at the stage of modern Korean translation (the Korean translation of the Gapsul edition postface and the like), and when the 1937 news report made 'royal calligraphy' its headline, it became fixed as the popular term (Chapter Ⅲ, Section 3; Chapter Ⅳ).
⑯ In which document does the expression 'royal composition in the king's own hand' first appear?
The earliest document presently confirmed is p. 557 of the Cheonnyeonsa (1999). If the citation on p. 572 is accurate, it may go back to the 'chinje eopil' of the Nongsujip, but the upper limit cannot be specified until that literary collection is identified (Chapter Ⅲ, Section 6, item 나; Chapter Ⅴ, Section 6).
⑰ From when did the perception of it as the representative family precept now in use spread?
The answer is given not as a single point in time but in layers. The practice of displaying it at the head of the genealogy dates at the latest from before the mid-18th century (the 'old genealogy' testimony); formalization at the clan level is 1754; entry into public discourse is 1722 (official compilation) and 1937 (popular); the upper limit of confirmation for the explicit designation as 'family precept' is the 1999 Cheonnyeonsa; and the wording of its presentation in public space is confirmed by the Ppuri Park sculpture (after 1997) (Chapter Ⅵ, Section 4).
Ⅺ. Analysis of the Process of Transmission
Taking the above examination together, the tradition is stratified into four stages.
Stage 1 (15th century): the layer of fact. King Sejong's exceptional commendation — the special promotion, the staff and armrest, and the royal edict — is confirmed by the Sillok. This fact itself is the kernel of all subsequent tradition. The motive of a family that had received the king's special favor to preserve that memory in material and written form is natural.
Stage 2 (latter half of the 16th century): the layer of attribution. The unsigned eight characters at the head of the genealogy are set down in writing as 'King Sejong's handwriting' (Mallyeok edition Samjoseol, provisional). This period is a period of putting genealogies in order, before the literati purges and the wars, a phase in which the family's memory is fixed in writing. Given that Yi Je-sin, the author of the Samjoseol, was a sixth-generation descendant of Yi Jeong-gan, this can be regarded as the recording of a tradition internal to the family.
Stage 3 (17th–18th centuries): the layer of institutionalization. Through the building of the shrine by the Cheongju Confucian community and the Seowon haengnok, the conveyance to the court through the 1722 memorial petitioning for a royal charter, the additional enshrinement of the following year, and then the inclusion of the tracing copy at the head of the Gapsul edition (1754), the understanding of it as royal calligraphy settles as the official position of the Confucian community and the clan. In particular, the 1722 memorial is the point at which the royal-calligraphy tradition was first entered in the official records and, in that it also requested the additional enshrinement of Yi Je-sin, the author of the Samjoseol, a nodal point showing the continuity of the group that carried the tradition. On the other hand, the entry of 1773 in which King Yeongjo bestowed a staff and armrest on Yi Jing-seong, tenth-generation descendant of Yi Jeong-gan, does not mention royal calligraphy, and so shows that the official narrative of the court (centered on the staff and armrest) and the tradition of the Confucian community and the clan (centered on royal calligraphy) coexisted in the same period as different layers. That the Gapsul edition postface stated its authorities and left a record of its process of judgment shows that the compilers of the time went through a procedure of critical verification of their own, and at the same time reveals that the authorities for that verification were, in the end, the clan and academy records from the 16th century onward.
Stage 4 (the modern period onward): the layer of publication and amplification, and of reconfirmation. With the confirmation and news report of 1937 the tradition passed into public discourse outside the clan, and thereafter it was amplified in local gazetteers, the press, and popular accounts with expressions of the 'only handwriting of King Sejong' kind. Meanwhile, as comparison of handwriting became possible after 2005, the bibliographic notes of public institutions converged on 'tracing copy'. The erection in 1978–1979 of the memorial-site stele, with text composed by Clan Association president Hui-seung, was a phase that fixed the tradition anew in an inscription on stone, creating a place of ritual to stand in for the tomb, visits to which had become impossible because of the division of the country; and the publication in 1990 of the Korean translation of the Gyeongsujip and the publication in 1999 of the comprehensive clan history Jeonui Yean Yissi cheonnyeonsa (Thousand-Year History of the Jeonui and Yean Yi Clans) were a nodal point at which the tradition, centered on classical Chinese documents, was collected and converted into Korean86; in this phase there is observed a concurrence of ordering and amplification in which, at the same time as the full classical Chinese text of the haengnok was resupplied to the clan sphere together with a Korean translation, the deathbed-visit account and 'royal composition in the king's own hand' — elements not confirmed in earlier documents — were incorporated into the official account (Chapter Ⅲ, Section 6). The confirmation in 2022 of the Seungjeongwon ilgi entry by a member of the clan and the putting of its result into a clan document ("The History of Our Family Precept") is, as a repetition of the 'confirmation of the tradition by a public record' that parallels 1937, the most recent phase of this stage. At the same time, as seen in the addition of the expression 'royal composition in the king's own hand', a pattern in which the ordering and the amplification of the tradition proceed side by side is also confirmed. That is, the modern period onward is a twofold phase that has spread and strengthened the tradition and at the same time provided occasions for its verification.
Ⅻ. Historical Assessment
It needs to be made clear that the results of source criticism do not impair the value of this family precept. First, King Sejong's exceptional commendation, the kernel of the tradition, is a fact firmly confirmed by official sources. Second, the content of the eight characters itself (the handing down of loyalty and filial piety in the family and the keeping of benevolence and reverence through the generations), whoever its writer may have been, has actually functioned as the family's norm for close to five centuries as a family precept embodying the essence of Joseon Confucian ethics, and its universal value has been recognized to the extent that other families too have borrowed it.87 Third, that the compilers of the Gapsul edition stated their authorities and left a record of their process of judgment (1754), and that a member of the clan personally sought out and confirmed the official record (2022), show the attitude of critical verification of the clan's intellect in the 18th and the 21st century respectively, and today's work of verification likewise stands on that same line. Fourth, however, the ordering of any period is at its most solid when it is carried out on the principle of source studies that distinguishes 'the authenticity of the record' from 'the factuality of the statement'. That is the distinction that the authenticity of the Seungjeongwon ilgi entry is certain, but what it proves is the statement of 1722, not the event of 1432.
At the same time, in public and scholarly accounts the following distinctions must be maintained. 'King Sejong commended Yi Jeong-gan's filial conduct and bestowed a staff and armrest' (confirmed fact); 'the clan has handed down the eight characters at the head of the genealogy as King Sejong's royal calligraphy, and its being set down in writing goes back, within the range confirmed up to the present, to the latter half of the 16th century' (later records, tradition); 'whether the extant tracing copy is in King Sejong's own hand has not been confirmed, and public institutions regard it as a tracing copy' (scholarly view). These three sentences do not conflict, and only when stated together are they accurate.
ⅩⅢ. Conclusion
The conclusions of this study are as follows.
1. King Sejong's edict of 1432 granting a special promotion, bestowing the staff and armrest, and commending filial conduct is a historical fact confirmed by the Sejong sillok (世宗實錄, Veritable Records of King Sejong). In the full texts of the edict and of the memorial of thanks in the same Sillok, in the obituary notice of the 27th day of the 9th month of Sejong 21 (1439), in the "Jeongdaebuin Kim-ssi myopyo" (tomb marker inscription of Lady Kim, 1445), in the spirit-path stele inscription of 1456 — in the 7th revision the full Classical Chinese text (the entire range of preface, lineage, and inscription) was deciphered and the absence of the eight characters was conclusively established — and in the congratulatory poems of the Gyeongsujip (慶壽集, Collection Celebrating Longevity) within the range examined, a bestowal of royal calligraphy is not confirmed to date.
2. The earliest record confirmed to date that sets down in writing the attribution of the eight characters to King Sejong is the Samjoseol in the Mallyeok edition (萬曆譜) of 1574, or the handwritten text of Lord Cheonggang appended after it (original unverified; provisional). That the eight characters themselves had been carried at the head of the earlier 'old genealogy' without any indication of the origin of the handwriting is the testimony of the postface to the Gapsul edition of 1754 (the Classical Chinese original was secured in this study), and the identification of that old genealogy is an unresolved task.
3. It is confirmed that the tradition of the royal calligraphy first appears in an official state record through the memorial of the Confucian scholars of Cheongju petitioning for a royal charter, contained in the entry for the 18th day of the 7th month of Gyeongjong 2 (1722) in the Seungjeongwon ilgi (承政院日記, Diaries of the Royal Secretariat). This record is the earliest confirmed to date containing the term 'royal calligraphy' (eopil) and the full text of the eight characters, and — on the basis of the original texts — the only premodern instance of the usage '御筆'. The terms in the original text of the Gapsul edition postface (1754) are "handwritten" (手書) and "specially bestowed" (特賜), and the expression 'royal calligraphy' in the postface was confirmed to be a supplement by the modern Korean translation. By contrast, the entry for the 3rd day of the 4th month of Yeongjo 49 (1773) (the bestowal of the staff and armrest on Yi Jing-seong, 10th-generation descendant of Yi Jeong-gan), the only related entry in which the court itself is the actor, does not mention royal calligraphy, showing that the official narrative of the court centered on the staff and armrest. The royal-calligraphy understanding was formalized at the level of the lineage by the inclusion of a traced copy in the Gapsul edition (1754), was popularized by the confirmation and press reports of 1937, and, by way of the publication preface to the 1990 Korean translation of the Gyeongsujip and the Cheonnyeonsa (Thousand-Year History) of 1999, led to the reconfirmation of the Seungjeongwon ilgi entry by a member of the lineage in 2022 and its documentation by the lineage ("Uri gahun-ui naeryeok," The History of Our Family Precept). As for the expression 'eoje eopil' (composed by the king and written in the king's own hand), the previous judgment has been revised and it has been confirmed that the expression goes back at the latest to the main text of the Cheonnyeonsa of 1999. At present there is no official recognition by the state, and the bibliographic notes of public institutions regard the extant copy as a traced copy.
3-1. As the key result of the 6th revision, the full Classical Chinese text of the Seowon haengnok (Academy Record of Conduct) quoted by the Gapsul edition postface was secured in the transcription carried on pages 573~576 of the Cheonnyeonsa, and the chain of sources was conclusively established. The phrase quoted in the postface, "世宗大王手書賜家傳忠孝世守仁敬八字," actually exists as it stands in the text of the Haengnok; the term in the Haengnok is not 'royal calligraphy' but 'handwritten' (手書); and the Haengnok is a documentary record that accurately reflects the precedents (崔鄲·徐積, 唐宣宗·宋仁宗) of the edict carried in the Sillok, its composition being fixed between the first printing of the Gyeongsujip (1509) and the Gapsul edition postface (1754). In addition, it was confirmed that two narratives coexist in the main text of the Cheonnyeonsa (1999) — the account placing the event in the commendation phase of 1432 (the line of the Haengnok and the publication preface) and the account of a deathbed bestowal in 1439 (the line of the quoted literary collection, 'chinje eopil,' personally composed and in the king's own hand) — so that the identification of the source text of the deathbed account was added as a new task.
3-2. The key results of the 7th revision are two. First, through the decipherment of the full Classical Chinese text of the spirit-path stele inscription, the silence of the near-contemporary sources of the fifteenth century was conclusively established at the level of the full text rather than at the level of excerpts, and with the addition of the obituary notice (1439) and the tomb marker inscription (1445) to the group of fifteenth-century sources, the range of examination of contemporary records was in effect completed. Second, the source text of the deathbed account and of 'chinje eopil' was fixed by title as the Nongsujip (聾叟集). However, a literary collection of this title is not identified in public databases, so that confirmation of the physical book remains the highest-priority task, one that governs the date of formation of the latter half of the royal-calligraphy tradition (the deathbed-account line). In addition, the memorial stele inscription at the old site (composed 1978, erected 1979; Clan Association president Hui-seung) was newly positioned as a modern epigraphic text of the First Narrative and of the "handwritten" line.
3-3. The key result of the 8th revision is the reorganization of the structure. First, the compilation process of the Cheonnyeonsa was analyzed in an independent chapter (Chapter Ⅴ), the compilation organization — publisher, chair of the publication committee, chair of the editorial committee, writers by branch, review, and expert supervision — was reconstructed from the text of the publication preface, it was fixed as a proposition that publisher and writer are not the same concept, and the roles of those involved in the compilation were standardized item by item as confirmed/unverified. The deathbed account and 'eoje eopil' are narrative elements that are first confirmed only at the stage of the Cheonnyeonsa, but since 'is first confirmed' and 'first created' are different propositions, the agent and the time of their origination are not specified until the quoted work, the Nongsujip, is identified. Second, a chapter on reception history (Chapter Ⅵ) was newly established, reconstructing in chronological order the process by which the eight characters, extending their media from the head of the genealogy → academy → entry in official state records → modern press reports → epigraphy → publications in Korean translation → public monuments → comprehensive clan history → documents posted by the lineage, became established as the representative family precept, and a design was presented for the field survey of media not yet investigated, such as plaques, folding screens, hanging scrolls, ritual documents, and educational materials.
3-4. The key result of the 9th revision is the securing of the physical pages of the back matter of the Cheonnyeonsa. The compilation roster on page 1133 fixed the whole of the organization (chair of the review committee, general arrangement and editing, proofreading, writers by part, and contributors of materials), and in particular it was confirmed that Yi Jong-gwan, in addition to being publisher and expert supervisor, is expressly named as the writer of Part 1 and of the History of the Seonbu Jeonseogong Branch Lineage in Part 6, so that the range of attribution of authorship of the pages carrying the deathbed account and 'eoje eopil' was narrowed to 'lead writer Tae-ho; writer Jong-gwan.' The editorial afterword on pages 1134~1135 states, together with the writing period of the chief writer (Yi Tae-ho) (1998. 11. 1~1999. 6. 1), the editorial principle that demands for exaggeration and false embellishment were deleted, fixing by first-hand testimony that an editorial filter intervened in the final text. The colophon fixed the edition history of the first printing (1999. 6. 1) and the enlarged edition (2002. 4. 30), so that collation of the edition to which the quoted pages belong was added as a new task. Despite this extension, the reservation that fixing the 'range' of attribution of authorship and clarifying the 'origin' of the narrative are separate matters — the boundaries of the division of labor not being fixed, the explicit citation of the Nongsujip, and the intervention of an editorial layer — is maintained as it stands.
3-5. The 10th revision is not an addition of new facts but a reinforcement of the method of synthesis. A stemma of transmission (Chapter Ⅶ), which rearranges the individual examinations of Chapters Ⅲ~Ⅵ according to the principles of manuscript stemmatics, was newly established, restoring a genealogy that distinguishes confirmed relations of quotation (Haengnok ⇒ Gapsul edition postface) from probable presumption (the parallel between the Haengnok and the memorial of 1722), and confirmation from the original text from what is provisional on the basis of reports; and this was made verifiable by a collation table of elements of the tradition by document and a chronology of the first appearance of each element. In addition, the methodological status of the ’silence of the sources’ was made explicit, fixing that the silence of the fifteenth-century sources has the status of a historical circumstance and not of a ground for a categorical conclusion. Since the stemma is an open structure in which the relevant node need only be replaced according to the identification of documents whose originals are unverified, all the follow-up tasks of this study can be carried out within this framework.
4. The portion of the Seungjeongwon ilgi for the reign of King Sejong is not extant, so that the absence of a contemporary record is structurally fixed. The exhaustive search by the search term '李貞幹' has been completed and the related entries have been fixed at two (1722, 1773); additional searches by auxiliary search terms ('松泉', '賜額', '孝靖', etc.), the tracing of the follow-up handling of the 1722 memorial by the Ministry of Rites (whether and when the royal charter was carried out), and the resolution of the discrepancy in the history of the academy between the memorial's own statement and the bibliographic notes are follow-up tasks.
5. Yi Jong-gwan was fixed in identity by the Jeonui Yean Yi-ssi cheonnyeonsa (Thousand-Year History of the Jeonui-Yean Yi Clan, 1999) as Yi Jong-gwan (李鍾寬), then president of the Clan Association, and as the publisher of that book, the author of its foreword, and its expert supervisor; in the 6th revision it was additionally fixed that he was the author of the publication preface to the 1990 Korean translation of the Gyeongsujip (19th-generation descendant of Lord Hyojeong, then president of the Jeonseogong Branch Association), that he served as chairman of the board of the Clan Association, and that he was the arranger of the section on the history of the settlement of the Ochang lineage in Part 6 of the Cheonnyeonsa; and in the 9th revision it was additionally fixed, by the roster on page 1133 and the colophon, that he was the writer of Part 1, the 'writer' of the History of the Seonbu Jeonseogong Branch Lineage in Part 6 (named alongside lead writer Tae-ho), and the publisher according to the colophon. While the principle of not concluding that he was the author of individual sections or sentences is maintained, the fact that he has been directly involved since 1990 in the official documentation of the narrative concerning the family precept has been proven by first-hand text. His career as a judge and his dates of birth and death are still not confirmed. In the roster, 'general arrangement and editing' is expressly assigned to Tae-ho and 'proofreading' to Tae-se, and Yi Jong-gwan is not named under either item; whether he attended compilation meetings and whether minutes exist is not confirmed to date. This can be determined only by securing records of the compilation process (Chapter Ⅴ, Section 4). Since supervision and editing, and publication and writing, are each separate roles, they must be proven by different sources, and even where one person held several roles concurrently (Yi Jong-gwan's concurrent roles as publisher, supervisor, and writer), each role is described only within the range confirmed by its own source.
6. Finally, within the range of the sources that can presently be confirmed, the most objective statement is as follows. King Sejong's commendation is confirmed as fact; the tradition of the royal calligraphy is confirmed in documents from the latter half of the sixteenth century at the latest; and whether the bestowal of royal calligraphy itself is fact is, to date, neither confirmed nor denied. This statement, without supporting either side, fixes the room for dispute on the boundary line of the sources. What remains is only tasks that can be answered by documents and field survey: the originals of the Mallyeok edition and the Sungjeong edition (崇禎譜, 1634) and the physical copy of the Gapsul edition; the line of the original printing of the Gyeongsujip; the physical stone and rubbings of the spirit-path stele (the full text has been secured); the original of the Seowon haengnok held by the academy; the identification of the physical book of the Nongsujip (聾叟集) (the source of the deathbed account and 'chinje eopil'); the later portion of the Seungjeongwon ilgi (auxiliary searches for 松泉·賜額· 孝靖); records of the compilation process such as the publication address of the Cheonnyeonsa (the roster at the end of the volume, the editorial afterword, and the colophon were secured in the 9th revision) and the minutes of the Clan Association; the collation of the first printing (1999) and the enlarged edition (2002); the field survey of media of reception such as plaques, folding screens, hanging scrolls, ritual documents, and educational materials; the date of installation of the monument in Ppuri Park; and the confirmation of primary materials relating to modern compilation.
ⅩⅣ. Significance of the Study and Final Principle
1. What This Study Does Not Determine
This study is not a study that judges whether King Sejong actually wrote the eight characters or did not. No source capable of answering that question presently exists, and to hand down a determination in place of sources that do not exist is not research but a profession of belief. What this study has reconstructed is not an event but a record. That is, it is a study that reconstructs, by the methods of source criticism, how a single sentence has been recorded, quoted, transmitted, and reinterpreted over some 600 years.
2. The Values This Study Has Aimed At
What this study has sought to offer the reader is not a conclusion but a verifiable framework. That aim is summarized in four points.
First, it does not steer toward a particular conclusion. Neither the defense nor the denial of the account of a bestowal of royal calligraphy is the purpose of this study, and every determination has been made only within the four levels of 'is confirmed / is transmitted / is presumed / is not confirmed to date.'
Second, it has arranged the sources in order of their time of composition and reconstructed the process of formation of the tradition. Individual documents had been mentioned before, but to arrange the whole genealogy, from the contemporary sources of the fifteenth century to modern lineage materials, on the criterion of confirmation from the original text and to restore its stemma is a new undertaking attempted by this study.
Third, it has placed the sources themselves, rather than the conclusion, at the center. The original texts and translations in the appendices, and the collation tables and stemma in the main text, have been arranged so that the reader can approach the sources directly and verify them independently without passing through the author's determinations.
Fourth, it has been designed as open research. If the original of the Mallyeok edition, the original of the Sungjeong edition, the original of the Haengnok held by the academy, or the physical book of the Nongsujip is discovered, the stemma and collation tables of this study can be revised at any time by replacing or supplementing the relevant node, and later researchers can continue verification and supplementation within the same framework.
3. Final Principle
The principle that runs through this study is summarized in one sentence.
History is not proven by belief; it is reconstructed from sources.
Accordingly, every conclusion of this study has been proven by original sources and footnotes, and whatever is not proven has, without exception, been stated as 'is not confirmed to date.' This principle does not impair the historical value of the eight characters. Rather, it is the way to bring fully to light, upon the confirmed fact of King Sejong's exceptional commendation, the whole history of a tradition in which, over six centuries, one family and one local community have preserved, documented, and reinterpreted that memory — in itself a cultural-historical asset.
4. Declaration of Open Research
This study is an interim research result written on the basis of the sources secured to date. If new primary sources such as minutes, internal documents, editorial materials, letters, photographs, video, audio recordings, or official documents are confirmed in the future, the existing analysis and conclusions can be revised and supplemented at any time. This is not a limitation of this study but a basic principle of historical scholarship, and it follows the methodology of Open Historical Research, in which research is continually updated according to the sources. No statement in this study is intended to conclude the responsibility of any particular person or to present the conclusion of a dispute, and every conclusion is always presented only within the range that the sources prove.
References
Primary Sources and Official State Materials
Sejong sillok (世宗實錄, Veritable Records of King Sejong), gwon 56, 25th day of the 4th month of Sejong 14 (1432); 3rd day of the 5th month of Sejong 14; gwon 86, 27th day of the 9th month of Sejong 21 (1439) (obituary notice of Yi Jeong-gan). National Institute of Korean History, Joseon wangjo sillok DB (sillok.history.go.kr).
Seungjeongwon ilgi (承政院日記, Diaries of the Royal Secretariat), chaek 542 (transcribed edition, chaek 29), entry for the 18th day of the 7th month of Gyeongjong 2 (1722) (memorial of Bak Su-ham, Confucian student of Cheongju, Chungcheong-do, and others); entry for the 3rd day of the 4th month of Yeongjo 49 (1773). National Institute of Korean History, Seungjeongwon ilgi DB (sjw.history.go.kr). ※ The portion for the reign of King Sejong is not transmitted. Exhaustive search by the search term '李貞幹' completed (Appendix 5); additional searches by auxiliary search terms required.
Genealogies and Lineage and Academy Documents (confirmation of originals required)
Jeonui Yi clan Seonghwa first edition (1476, compiled by Yi Ha; original not transmitted).
Jeonui Yi clan Mallyeok edition (compiled 1574; preface and postface 1575). Directed by Lord Jeongsuk Tak, Lord Yakpo Hae-su, and Lord Cheonggang Je-sin, with the cooperation of An-ro (history of the Bujeonggong branch). "Samjoseol" (Yi Je-sin) at the head of the volume. Woodblock edition in a single volume, 現無傳 (history of the Bujeonggong branch). Can be confirmed indirectly through the prefaces and postfaces reproduced in the opening volume of the Gapsul edition (preface and postface of the old Mallyeok genealogy).
Jeonui Yi clan Sungjeong edition (崇禎譜, 1634). Directed by the brothers Gu-jun and Myeong-jun and by Yi Hu-gi, magistrate of Yeongcheon; woodblock edition in 2 volumes in all; the oldest extant edition and extremely rare (history of the Bujeonggong branch). Confirmation of the location of a physical copy is the highest-priority field-survey task.
Postface by Yi Jing-guk to the Jeonui Yi clan Gapsul edition (1754). The Classical Chinese original of the postface was secured in a lineage transcription. Presumed physical copy: Jeonui Yi-ssi jokbo (Genealogy of the Jeonui Yi Clan), wooden movable-type edition, 10 gwon in 10 chaek, compiled by Yi Deok-yong and others, held by the Jangseogak of the Academy of Korean Studies (call number K2-1782); original-text images made public in the Digital Jangseogak (jsg.aks.ac.kr). The discrepancy as to the type (lineage history: metal movable type / Jangseogak bibliography: wooden movable type) needs to be determined by field survey. Collation of the transcription with the physical copy is incomplete.
"Hyojeonggong Songcheon seowon haengnok" (Record of Conduct of Lord Hyojeong, Songcheon Academy) (composed between 1509 and 1754). Full Classical Chinese text and Korean translation: transcription carried on pages 575~576 of the Jeonui Yean Yi-ssi cheonnyeonsa. The original held by the academy requires field survey.
"Uri gahun-ui naeryeok" (The History of Our Family Precept), kept by the Jeonui-Yean Yi Clan Association Headquarters (date of composition unknown; present form established after October 2022).
"Jokbo ganhaeng naeyeok" (Record of Genealogy Publications), website of the Jeonui Yi-ssi Bujeonggongpa Jongmunhoe (www.jlbj.net), accessed 2026. 7. 15. ※ Publication history of 17 editions from the Seonghwa first edition (1476) to the Gyeongo comprehensive genealogy (1990). From the text it is presumed to be a reproduction in the line of the Sejeok section in the opening volume of the Gyeongo comprehensive genealogy (1990), but collation with the original source is incomplete. Preservation copy of screen captures secured (2026. 7. 15 20:05~20:06, 6 sheets, bound as a separate PDF). In this study it is treated as Grade 5 material (lineage compilations of the modern period and after).
"Haemyeong yoguseo" (Demand for Explanation), written by Yi Jong-gwan, addressed to Yi Yong-ho, 2023 (date not entered), copy of 14 pages. ※ Includes a reproduction of the 7 items of the appeal and an attached sheet (a Classical Chinese passage from the Mallyeok edition postface). As it is a private document, personal information (resident registration number, etc.) needs to be masked in the preservation copy.
Yi Yong-ho, "Hosomun --- Jeonui Yi-ssi sijo Taesagong jeongcheseong hwangnip-eul wihan tanwonseo" (Appeal --- Petition for the Establishment of the Identity of Taesagong, Founder of the Jeonui Yi Clan), written 2023. 1. 11 (sent 2023. 2. 6), 8 items in all, photographic copy of the original secured. Signed "Yong-ho, 30th generation, Daesaseonggong Branch Association of the Jeonui Yi clan."
Yi Yong-ho, "Cheongwonseo --- 太師公-ui jeongcheseong-eul hoebokhara" (Petition --- Restore the Identity of 太師公), 2023. 1. 11, photographic copy of the original secured. ※ States that the Mallyeok edition postface (1574) and the opening volume and preface of the Gyeongo edition (1990) are attached as separate sheets --- securing the physical attached sheets becomes the route to confirming the full text of the Mallyeok edition postface.
"萬曆譜跋" (An-ro, last ten days of the 3rd month of Mallyeok 3, 1575), copy of the version reproduced in the opening volume, Volume 1, of the Jeonui Yean Yi-ssi seongbo (Clan Register of the Jeonui-Yean Yi Clan) --- secured as attached sheet <2> of Yi Yong-ho's petition. ※ The basis for fixing the reading of the disputed phrase "首冠家訓尊世守也." The fidelity of the reproduction is to be finally fixed by collation with the Jangseogak copy.
Yi Yong-ho (presumed), "Jongsa sogo (宗事小考)" handwritten memorandum of history, date of composition unknown, photographic copy. ※ The notation "一石 熙昇 회장" --- the basis for fixing the identity with Yi Hui-seung. Enclosed together: "Handwritten List of References," "Memorandum on the Verification of the Character 次 in the Han-Han daejeon," and "Attached Sheet <1> Genealogical Chart."
Jeonui-in-ui yeoksa-wa bit (The History and Light of the People of Jeonui) (lineage history of the Eunwagong lineage of the Seoktangong branch of the Jeonui Yi clan), Jeonui Yi-ssi Eunwagong Jongjung, 2011. ※ Page 12 carries a message of encouragement by Yi Yong-ho (2011. 1) --- a text praising the eight characters as handed down in the family of the Jeonui Yi clan. (The place where the photograph of the Mallyeok edition is carried is not this book --- confirmed by comparison with the physical copy.)
Gyeongwonnok (景遠錄), Jeonui-Yean Yi Clan Association Headquarters, published in the mid-1990s. "Yeongsajae myodangho jejeong simalgi" (Account of the Establishment of the Shrine Name Yeongsajae) (pages 179~180) and "Gakgeup wiwonhoe wiwonnok" (Roster of Members of the Committees at Each Level) (page 226) secured (photographic copies).
Jeonui Yean Yi-ssi cheonnyeonsa (Thousand-Year History of the Jeonui-Yean Yi Clan), Jeonui-Yean Yi Clan Association Headquarters, first printing 1999. 6. 1, enlarged edition 2002. 4. 30. (Colophon: publisher Yi Jong-gwan, editor Yi Dae-seon, managing director Yi Sang-ho, compilation Yi Tae-ho; roster at the end of the volume: chair of the publication committee Yi Dae-seon, chair of the editorial committee Yi Yong-ho, general arrangement and editing Yi Tae-ho, proofreading Yi Tae-se) ※ In this study the 6th revision used for analysis pages 550~579 of Part 6, the 7th revision pages 860~865 of Part 7 and a re-deciphered copy of page 572 of Part 6, and the 9th revision the physical pages of 1133~1135 at the end of the volume (compilation roster and editorial afterword) and of the colophon. Since the colophon of the pages secured includes the publication particulars of the enlarged edition, they are judged to be of the enlarged-edition line; collation with the first printing is incomplete.
Gyeongsujip (慶壽集). First printing 1509 (Jungjong 4), reprinting 1682 (Sukjong 8), third printing 1918, fourth printing in Korean translation 1990 (publication preface: Yi Jong-gwan, president of the Jeonseogong Branch Association). Whether the line of the original printing is extant is unverified.
Spirit-path stele of Yi Jeong-gan (1456, composed by Yi Seo-jang). "Hyojeonggong hwi Jeong-gan sindobimyeong byeongseo" (Spirit-Path Stele Inscription of Lord Hyojeong, Personal Name Jeong-gan, with Preface), full Classical Chinese text and Korean translation: transcription carried on pages 860~864 of Part 7 of the Jeonui Yean Yi-ssi cheonnyeonsa (deciphered in the 7th revision). Collation with the physical stone and rubbings required.
"Jeongdaebuin Kim-ssi myopyo" (1445, composed by Yi Yang-gan). Original text and translation: transcription carried on page 860 of Part 7 of the Jeonui Yean Yi-ssi cheonnyeonsa.
"Hyojeonggong hwi Jeong-gan yuheobimyeong" (Memorial Stele Inscription at the Old Site of Lord Hyojeong, Personal Name Jeong-gan) (composed 1978, erected 1979; composed by Clan Association president Hui-seung). Transcription carried on pages 864~865 of Part 7 of the Jeonui Yean Yi-ssi cheonnyeonsa.
Nongsujip (聾叟集). The literary collection quoted on page 572 of the Cheonnyeonsa as the source of the narrative of the deathbed visit and 'chinje eopil.' The title was fixed by decipherment in the 7th revision; the physical book, author, and date of composition are unverified (not identified in public DBs).
Studies, Bibliographic Notes, and Press Reports
"Gajeon chunghyo sesu ingyeong" and "Jeonui Yi-ssi," Hanguk hyangto munhwa jeonja daejeon (Encyclopedia of Korean Local Culture), Digital Guro munhwa daejeon (GC03000379, GC03000386), the Academy of Korean Studies.
"Songcheon seowon," "Seungjeongwon ilgi," "Jeonui Yi-ssi jokbo," and "Jeonseong sego," Encyclopedia of Korean Culture (E0031087, E0032244, E0049592, E0049489), the Academy of Korean Studies.
Yi Sang-ju, "Gajeon chunghyo sesu ingyeong-eun Sejong-ui chinpil-ilkka" (Is Gajeon chunghyo sesu ingyeong in King Sejong's Own Hand?) (2024. 8. 27.); "Jeonui Yi-ssi gahun-i Sejong chinpil-lo allyeojineun gwajeong" (The Process by Which the Jeonui Yi Clan Family Precept Came to Be Known as King Sejong's Own Hand) (2024. 11. 5.), Sejong Daewang Sinmun.
Bibliographic note on "Jeonui Yi-ssi jokbo," Digital Jangseogak of the Academy of Korean Studies (JSG_K2-1782).
Cheon Hye-bong, 'Sejong daewang eosa Huiujeong Hyoryeong daegun bangmun'-gwa 'Hyoryeong daegun chinpil jeonmun'-e daehan gochal (A Study of 'The Royal Bestowal by King Sejong of the Huiujeong Pavilion and the Visit to Grand Prince Hyoryeong' and 'The Memorial in Grand Prince Hyoryeong's Own Hand'), Gosanjae, 2005.
Hangeul 5, Hangeul Hakhoe (Korean Language Society), 1937; "Sejong daewang eopil balgyeon" (Royal Calligraphy of King Sejong Discovered), Dong-A Ilbo, 1937.
"Haegun 1-ho jamsuham Yi Cheon-ham, Sejong-i gahun sseojwo" (The Navy's First Submarine, the Yi Cheon; King Sejong Wrote the Family Precept), Dtnews24, 2011. 10. 23. (reproduction of the description of the work on the front and the account of origins on the back of the Jeonui Yi clan monument "Ingyeong" in Ppuri Park, Jung-gu, Daejeon).
Appendices
Appendix 1. Routes for Confirming the Original Sources
In accordance with copyright and the principle of collation with the originals, this study does not reproduce the full modern Korean translations of official state sources but presents the routes for confirming them. (1) Original text (Classical Chinese) and Korean translation of the edict of the 25th day of the 4th month of Sejong 14 in the Sejong sillok: search for '세종 14년 4월 25일' in the Joseon wangjo sillok DB of the National Institute of Korean History. (2) Full text of Yi Jeong-gan's memorial of thanks of the 3rd day of the 5th month of the same year: the same DB. (3) Entry for the 18th day of the 7th month of Gyeongjong 2 in the Seungjeongwon ilgi: the original text was confirmed in this study and the key passage is carried in Appendix 4. For entries on the follow-up handling, search additionally for '李貞幹', '松泉', and '賜額' in the Seungjeongwon ilgi DB. (4) Mallyeok edition and Gapsul edition: field survey of the editions of the Jeonui Yi clan genealogy held by the National Library of Korea, the Jangseogak of the Academy of Korean Studies, and the Kyujanggak. (5) Seowon haengnok: field survey of the materials held by Songcheon Academy (Cheongju) and the related lineages.
Appendix 2. List of Unverified Matters (Follow-up Verification Tasks)
| No. | Unverified matter | Method of verification |
| 1 | Identification of the edition of the 'old genealogy' spoken of by the Gapsul edition postface, and collation of the transcription of the postface with the original (the physical Gapsul edition) | Field survey of the head of the volume in the originals of the Mallyeok edition, the Sungjeong edition (崇禎譜, 1634), and the Gapsul edition (1754) |
| 2 | Whether the original of the Mallyeok edition (1574) is extant; confirmation of the distinction between the main text of the Samjoseol and the handwritten text of Lord Cheonggang that follows it | Survey of copies held by the Jangseogak, the Kyujanggak, the National Library of Korea, and the lineages |
| 3 | The exact time of composition of the Seowon haengnok (Academy Record of Conduct) (within the fixed interval 1509~1754) and the source of the passage concerned; whether the original held by the academy is extant (the text was secured in the 6th revision) | Field survey of originals held by Songcheon Academy and the lineages; textual collation with family records and accounts of conduct ※ The text itself has been secured in the transcription on pages 575~576 of the Cheonnyeonsa (Thousand-Year History) |
| 4 | Whether the line of the original printing of the Gyeongsujip (Collection Celebrating Longevity) is extant (the publication history was fixed by the publication preface to the Korean translation) | Survey of old-book catalogs and lineage holdings ※ Discrimination of the portions added in each edition |
| 4-1 | Identification of the physical book of the Nongsujip (聾叟集) (the source of the deathbed account and 'chinje eopil' (personally composed and in the king's own hand); the title was fixed by decipherment in the 7th revision) | Field survey of literary collections held by the lineages and the academy; survey of old-book catalogs — the highest-priority task, one that governs the date of formation of 'eoje eopil' (composed by the king and written in the king's own hand) and the deathbed account |
| 5 | Presence or absence of any mention of royal calligraphy in the full text of the spirit-path stele inscription (1456) — absence conclusively established by decipherment of the full text in the 7th revision (completed) | Only the final collation with the physical stone and rubbings remains |
| 6 | The follow-up handling of the 1722 memorial by the Ministry of Rites, and whether and when the royal charter was carried out (the discrepancy between the 1711 account of the bibliographic notes and the memorial's own statement) | Search of the Sillok and the Seungjeongwon ilgi (承政院日記, Diaries of the Royal Secretariat) for the reigns of Gyeongjong~Yeongjo (松泉, 賜額, etc.) |
| 7 | The relation of priority and dependence between the Yi Jeong-gan passage of the 1722 memorial and the Seowon haengnok (textual collation was carried out in the 6th revision — common elements and differences of terminology confirmed) | Dependent on fixing the precise time of composition of the Haengnok (Task 3). The common elements and differences of terminology have been confirmed |
| 8 | The dates of birth and death of Yi Jong-gwan (李鍾寬), his career as a judge, and his participation in genealogy compilation (his identity has been fixed) | Directories of the legal profession, the official gazette, prefaces and postfaces of the comprehensive genealogies, minutes of the Clan Association |
| 9 | Bibliographic, calligraphic, and paper analysis of the extant traced copy | Commissioning of bibliographic and scientific analysis |
| 10 | Changes of narrative by edition from the modern period on (including the time at which expressions such as 'eoje eopil' were added) | Textual collation of each edition of the comprehensive genealogies and of lineage documents |
| 11 | The date of composition, the author, and the revision history of "Uri gahun-ui naeryeok" (The History of Our Family Precept) | Survey of the records of the Clan Association Headquarters |
| 12 | Securing of the front and back matter of the Cheonnyeonsa — compilation roster, editorial afterword, colophon, publication address | Partly resolved (9th): compilation roster on page 1133, editorial afterword on pages 1134~1135, and colophon secured. Only the publication address remains |
| 13 | Whether the minutes of the compilation meetings of the Cheonnyeonsa and the manuscripts submitted by each branch are extant | Survey of the records of the Clan Association and of lineage holdings |
| 14 | The physical objects and dates of use of the media of reception (plaques, folding screens, hanging scrolls; order-of-service texts and prayer texts for grave rites; educational materials and newsletters) | Field survey and cataloging at Songcheon Academy, the Clan Association Headquarters, and the head family |
| 15 | The date of installation of the Jeonui Yi clan monument in Ppuri Park and the full text of its account of origins | Inquiry into the records of the managing institution; on-site field survey (collation with the reproduction in the press report) |
| 16 | Collation of the first printing (1999) and the enlarged edition (2002) of the Cheonnyeonsa | Collation of the physical copies of both editions (confirmation of the edition to which the quoted pages belong and of shifts in the text) |
Appendix 3. Table of Source Grades
| Grade | Sources concerned | Character |
| Grade 1 | Sejong sillok (世宗實錄, Veritable Records of King Sejong) (entries of 1432) | Official state source based on contemporary historiographers' drafts |
| Grade 2 | Spirit-path stele (1456; excerpted original text confirmed), Gyeongsujip (first printing 1509; what is extant is later editions) | Epigraphy and poetry and prose of a period close to the event. The spirit-path stele requires collation of the full text; the Gyeongsujip requires criticism of the edition layers of addition, loss, and supplementation |
| Grade 3 | Seungjeongwon ilgi entry of 1722; Samjoseol (1574) and Gapsul edition postface (1754) | Later records whose time of composition is confirmed. However, the 1722 entry is in form an official state record but in content a quotation of a tradition of the Confucian literati |
| Grade 4 | Seowon haengnok (composed between 1509 and 1754; text secured) | Lineage and academy record whose interval of composition is fixed and whose text is secured. The precise time of composition and the source are unclear |
| Grade 5 | Modern press reports, local gazetteers, and general surveys; Jeonui Yean Yi-ssi cheonnyeonsa (Thousand-Year History of the Jeonui-Yean Yi Clan, 1999); modern lineage records ("Uri gahun-ui naeryeok") | Secondary narrative and modern compilation of tradition. However, the bibliographic notes of public institutions have value as representing the views of the scholarly community, and the documentary section of the Cheonnyeonsa (carrying original texts such as the spirit-path stele inscription) and the note on the circumstances of discovery appended to the lineage record (2022) have value as a sourcebook and as a source for the history of the tradition, respectively |
Appendix 4. Original Texts and Translations of the Related Entries in the Seungjeongwon ilgi
(1) 18th day of the 7th month of Gyeongjong 2 (1722) — the Yi Jeong-gan passage in the memorial of the Confucian scholars of Cheongju petitioning for a royal charter
This is the passage concerning Yi Jeong-gan in the memorial in which Bak Su-ham (朴守諴), Confucian student of Cheongju, Chungcheong-do, and others requested a royal charter for the shrine of the seven worthies and the additional enshrinement of Yi Je-sin, Choe Seok-jeong, and Yi In-hyeok. In the memorial Yi Jeong-gan is referred to as "觀察使贈諡孝靖公臣李貞幹."88
[Original text] 李貞幹, 自幼有至性, 其父早死, 事母極孝, 老而不衰, 嘗慕老萊子斑衣娛親之意, 爲嬰兒戲, 以悅母志, 世宗聞而嘉之, 擢拜中樞院使, 遂以御筆, 書家傳忠孝世守仁敬八大字, 以褒之。又令賜宴壽親, 州人至今艶稱之。
[Translation] Yi Jeong-gan had from childhood a nature of the utmost sincerity. When his father died early, he served his mother with the utmost filial devotion, which did not change even in his old age; having long admired the intent of Lao Laizi, who delighted his parents with many-colored clothes, he played as a little child to gladden his mother's heart. King Sejong heard of this and thought it praiseworthy, selected him for appointment as Jungchuwonsa, and at length, in the king's own hand, wrote the eight large characters 'Gajeon chunghyo, sesu ingyeong' (loyalty and filial piety handed down in the family; benevolence and reverence kept through the generations) to commend him. He also had a banquet bestowed to celebrate his mother's long life, and the people of the district speak of it admiringly to this day. (Author's translation)
[Original text of the royal reply] 省疏具悉。疏辭令廟堂該曹, 稟處。
[Translation of the royal reply] I have examined the memorial and understood it fully. As to the contents of the memorial, let the State Council and the office concerned report and dispose of the matter. (Author's translation. The memorial was referred down to the Ministry of Rites)
(2) 3rd day of the 4th month of Yeongjo 49 (1773) — audience granted to Yi Jing-seong, 10th-generation descendant of Yi Jeong-gan, and bestowal of the staff and armrest (excerpt)
[Original text] 前五衛將李徵聖, 與魚必溟同召, 今日見焉, 以賜几杖。李貞幹十代孫, 戊申亦入原從功臣, 年今八十三, 筋力尙强, 況武臣? 令該曹, 知中樞加設單付, 以表辛勤召見之意。
[Translation] The former Owijang Yi Jing-seong was summoned together with Eo Pil-myeong and seen today, and the staff and armrest were bestowed on him. (Yi Jing-seong) is the 10th-generation descendant of Yi Jeong-gan and in the Musin year (1728) was also entered among the Wonjong merit subjects; he is now eighty-three years of age and his strength is still robust, and how much more so as he is a military official. Let the ministry concerned appoint him by single-candidate nomination (單付) to a supernumerary post of Jijungchubusa, so as to mark the intent of summoning and seeing one who has not spared his labors. (Author's translation; excerpt)
Bibliographic note: Seungjeongwon ilgi, chaek 542 (transcribed edition, chaek 29), Sinchuk day, 18th day of the 7th month of Gyeongjong 2; 3rd day of the 4th month of Yeongjo 49. The original text is a document of the Joseon period and is not subject to copyright protection, and the translation was newly made by the author. (2) is an excerpt, and confirmation of the preceding and following context is required.
(3) Postface by Yi Jing-guk to the Gapsul edition (1754) (on the basis of the lineage transcription)
The full original text and translation are carried in Chapter Ⅲ, Section 3, item 라. Points of textual collation in the transcription: 開卷껜見 → 開卷即見 (mistranscription by intrusion of a Hangul character). Points for annotation: 聖朝 (the '聖祖' given alongside in the Korean translation is an error), 世廟 (from the context, King Sejong; however, since there are many instances in Joseon documents where it refers to 世祖, annotation is required), no expression 御筆 in the original text (expressed only as 手書·特賜). Collation with the physical Gapsul edition is a follow-up task.89
(4) "Hyojeonggong Songcheon seowon haengnok" (Record of Conduct of Lord Hyojeong, Songcheon Academy) (on the basis of the transcription carried on pages 575~576 of the Cheonnyeonsa)
The original text and translation are carried in Chapter Ⅲ, Section 4, item 나. Bibliographic and text-critical points: ① The pages of the Cheonnyeonsa preserve, in the full Classical Chinese text, the blank spaces (空格) of honorific elevation (擡頭) (before 世宗大王· 典敎·賜·命). ② Problems of decipherment: 晚承'震'獎 is judged from the context to be a misprint for 宸獎 (the sovereign's encouragement); 崔'郾', when collated with the 崔鄲 of the original text of the edict in the Sillok, is an error or variant writing owing to similarity of character form; 銀杏樹可'菱' is judged to be a misprint for 可蔭; in all cases, however, the writing of the original text has been given alongside. ③ '太師公十一代孫' appears to be a mistake for 10th-generation descendant (11th generation) in the reckoning of the lineage, and the Korean translator of the Cheonnyeonsa also noted this. ④ Collation with the original held by the academy is a follow-up task.90
(5) Spirit-path stele inscription of Yi Jeong-gan (on the basis of the full Classical Chinese text on pages 860~861 of Part 7 of the Cheonnyeonsa)
The original text and translation of the passage on King Sejong's commendation are carried in Chapter Ⅲ, Section 1, item 라 (the text agrees with the excerpt on page 570 of the Cheonnyeonsa).91 In the 7th revision the full Classical Chinese text on pages 860~861 of Part 7 ("Hyojeonggong hwi Jeong-gan sindobimyeong byeongseo," Spirit-Path Stele Inscription of Lord Hyojeong, Personal Name Jeong-gan, with Preface) and the Korean translation on pages 861~864 were secured, the entire range of preface, lineage, and inscription was deciphered, and it was conclusively established that there is no mention corresponding to the eight characters, royal calligraphy, or a handwritten text. Bibliographic and text-critical points: ① The date of composition is the Byeongja year, Jingtai 7 (1456), and the 'Byeongja year, Jingtai 7 (1458)' at the end of the Korean translation is a mistake in conversion to the Western calendar. ② The title of the composer at the end of the Classical Chinese page, '嘉善大司憲府大夫司憲 全城君 恕長', is judged to be a transcriptional disorder of '嘉善大夫 司憲府大司憲' (the Korean translation page renders it, corrected, as 'Gaseon daebu, Saheonbu daesaheon, Lord Jeonseong, Seo-jang'). ③ The complete re-transcription and textual collation of the full text is left, owing to the limits of the resolution of the pages, as a follow-up task to be carried out together with collation with the physical stone and rubbings.
(6) "Jeongdaebuin Kim-ssi myopyo" (tomb marker inscription of Lady Kim) (on the basis of page 860 of Part 7 of the Cheonnyeonsa)
29th day of the 2nd month of the Eulchuk year, Zhengtong 10 (1445); composed by her son Yi Yang-gan, Naeseom soyun. Key passage: "夫人天資淑懿, 秉心淵眞。公先卒, 寡居五十年, 子孫盈門, 皆爲搢紳, 訓之以禮, 撫之以慈, 家之規範, 爲世所慕。" (punctuation by the author) No mention of the eight characters or royal calligraphy. The note of the Korean translator of the Cheonnyeonsa points out the discrepancy in the length of life between the tombstone inscription of Lord Jeonseo (102 years) and the tomb marker inscription (100 years) and judged 100 years, reckoned from the year of birth (1342), to be correct.
(7) "Hyojeonggong hwi Jeong-gan yuheobimyeong" (Memorial Stele Inscription at the Old Site of Lord Hyojeong, Personal Name Jeong-gan) (on the basis of pages 864~865 of Part 7 of the Cheonnyeonsa)
Erected on March 4 of the Gimi year (1979); composed by Clan Association president Hui-seung (熙昇) (written in October of the Muo year). Bibliographic and text-critical points: ① The cyclical year given alongside on the page, 'Muo (1976)', is inconsistent (Muo=1978, Byeongjin=1976), and for consistency with the year of erection (1979) it is judged to have been composed in 1978. ② Text relating to the eight characters: "家傳忠孝 世守仁敬 여덟 字를 친히 써 주시고" (he personally wrote and gave the eight characters 家傳忠孝 世守仁敬) — placed in the commendation phase of 1432~1434 (First Narrative); an expression of the "handwritten" line. ③ The inscription (銘) is in the form of a sijo in Korean. ④ The stele text itself states the circumstance that, owing to the division of the country, the graves at Jangdan could not be visited and tended for 33 years, and the function of the memorial stele as a substitute for the rites.92
Appendix 5. Table of Discrimination of the Search Results for '李貞幹' in the Seungjeongwon ilgi
| Date of entry | Gist of contents | Discrimination |
| Gyeongjong 2 (1722) 7. 18 | Memorial of Bak Su-ham, Confucian scholar of Cheongju, and others petitioning for a royal charter for, and additional enshrinement in, the shrine of the seven worthies. Statement of royal calligraphy in the Yi Jeong-gan passage | Related (this study, Chapter Ⅲ, Section 2, items 가~다) |
| Yeongjo 6 (1730) 5. 26 | Memorial of Yi Deok-su, Bujehak (concerning the rewards for the compilation of the Bogam of the previous reign) | Unrelated (Yi Jeong-gan not mentioned) |
| Yeongjo 12 (1736) 10. 27 | 李榮榦 and others in a list of names | Unrelated (partial match in a list of names) |
| Yeongjo 12 (1736) 11. 7 | 李貞榦 in a list of Confucian scholars of the eight provinces | Unrelated (a different person of the same name written with a variant character; a living Confucian scholar) |
| Yeongjo 49 (1773) 4. 3 | Audience granted to Yi Jing-seong, 10th-generation descendant of Yi Jeong-gan; bestowal of the staff and armrest; single-candidate nomination to a supernumerary post of Jijungchu | Related (this study, Chapter Ⅲ, Section 2, item 라) |
| Jeongjo 6 (1782) 11. 2 | 李貞幹 in a large-scale list of personal names | Unrelated (a different person of the same name) |
Criteria of discrimination: the identity of the person (including comparison of character strokes) and the relevance of the contents of the entry. The person in the entry of the 7th day of the 11th month of 1736 has as the last character of his name not 幹 but 榦, and, being a living Confucian scholar who submitted a memorial, cannot be the same person as Yi Jeong-gan, who died in 1439. This table of discrimination is limited to the search term '李貞幹' and does not capture entries in which he is referred to only by the name of the academy, his posthumous title, or the like.
Appendix 6. Register of Documents by Person (Yi Jong-gwan and Yi Yong-ho)
[Publication withheld] The register of documents by person and its facsimiles (sourcebook) include documents bearing real names that relate to proceedings in progress, and their publication is therefore withheld in the Public Edition.
Colophon
A Study of the Documentary Origins and Transmission of “Gajeon chunghyo, sesu ingyeong” (loyalty and filial piety handed down in the family; benevolence and reverence kept through the generations)
Author: Chunhwa Lee (Architect)
Edition: Public Edition (Scholarly Volume) --- based on the manuscript of the 16th revision
Date of final editing: August 6, 2026
In accordance with the methodology of Open Historical Research,
this book may be revised as new primary sources are confirmed.