By Chung Ah-young
Staff Reporter
The annals of the Joseon Kingdom, comprising 1,893 books covering 472 years (1392-1863) of history from founder King Taejo to the end of King Cheoljong, will be available on the Internet starting from Dec. 12.
According to the National Institute of Korean History, it has completed the three-year project to set up online archives of the annals.
The institute said that it will open the online service at https://sillok.history.go.kr from Dec. 12, enabling Internet users to see its Korean translation, the original texts in Chinese and original images.
The institute said that the digital archive of the annals is dedicated to the preservation of records from the Joseon period that has permanent historical value.
The institute already began offering electronic records in Chinese and Korean last year. But this year's project has finished digitalizing all of the images of the original texts from the temples on Mt. Taebaek.
All the annals were originally preserved in four different locations after the Japanese invasion in the 16th century _ temples in Mt. Taebaek, Mt. Jeoksang, Mt. Odae and Ganghwa Island.
Also, the digital information enables users to easily get information on social status, family origins and official post history of historical figures and the royal genealogy.
The online service also links the annals to the daily records of the royal secretariat of the Joseon Kingdom to help compare similar incidents between the two.
The thick, extensive set is considered to deal with the longest period of a single kingdom of any search records in the world. For their cultural and historic rarity, the Annals of the Joseon Kingdom deserve world cultural preservation as invaluable documentary heritage.
To broaden public access to the annals, the Korean government has supported the project of translating them into Korean from the original Chinese. The Korean edition of the annals of the Joseon era was completed in 1993. To provide easy public access to the annals themselves and information about them, a CD-ROM version was made in 1995.