By Chung Ah-young
The Jangseogak Archives, which hold the time-honored royal records from the Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910), reopened at the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS) in Bundang, Gyeonggi Province Tuesday.
The library has moved to a new building within the AKS compounds to accommodate the increasing ancient collections. It moved to AKS from Changgyeong Palace in 1981.
The construction of the new building began on April 6, 2009 and was completed in May this year with some 22.6 billion won in construction costs.
“The reopening of ‘Jangseogak’ is meant to recover its dignity as a royal library after it experienced the vicissitudes of Korean history,” Chung Chung-kil, president of AKS, said.
Jangseogak is the second largest archive that houses royal documents after Gyujanggak, which holds over 90,000 classical texts from the royal court, along with some 40,000 texts from the private sector.
King Gojong planned to build a royal archive to house some 100,000 volumes of books collected from various institutions around the nation, including the annals of the past kings and other royal house-related records under the name of the “Imperial House Book Collection” in 1908. But, as Korea was forcibly annexed by Japan two years later in 1910, the plan was abandoned.
In February 1911, “Iwangjik,” a new government agency, founded by the Japanese colonial government took over the management of the Imperial House Book Collection. In June of the same year, Iwangjik set up a library named “Iwangjik Jangseogak,” and was placed inside Changdeok Palace in 1915. The collection held by the institution was relocated to a four-story building, located southeast of Nakseonjae in the palace. The library was renamed Jangseogak from 1918. The Jangseogak collection was moved to Changgyeong Palace in 1936.
Then, the library was transferred from the Cultural Heritage Administration to its present home of the AKS in 1981 but it still didn’t have its own building.
The archives serve a dual role of preserving and managing invaluable classical texts from the royal archives of the Joseon Kingdom and carrying out research on those texts in order to disseminate historical knowledge to a broader audience.
The Jangseogak collection deals with the full spectrum of activities of the royal court, ranging from writings on the culture of the nobility and royal power to edicts and state policies.
To enhance its collection, the academy has focused on collecting private material from the Joseon noble clans nationwide since the 1990s and currently it holds some 40,000 texts. Private owners have donated ancient documents, which have been handed down from their ancestors to the library for further research.