연산군일기

연산군일기 표지.

정의

조선 제10대 왕 연산군의 재위 기간의 역사를 기록한 책.

연산군의 재위 기간인 1494년 12월에서 1506년 9월까지 11년 10개월 간의 국정 전반에 관한 역사를 다루고 있다.

연산군일기 영역 프로젝트

번역결과물

• 총서(總序)
• 연산 즉위년(燕山 卽位年) 1494년(갑인)

기타

• 연산군일기 번역지침
• 연산군일기 Glossary

Introduction

Yeonsangun 燕山君 (1476-1506; r. 1494-1506), whose given name was Yung 㦕, was the first son born to King Seongjong 成宗 (r. 1457-1494) and his second consort Queen Jeheon 齊獻王后 (1455-1482), later known as the Deposed Queen Yun 廢妃尹氏. He was installed as the crown prince in 1483 and, after the death of his father, ascended the throne on the twenty ninth on the twelfth month of 1494. From the very beginning of his reign, he was at odds with the Neo-Confucian literati over trivial matters; these disagreements ultimately led to a series of purges against the literati. In the last years of his reign, he lost the support of his ministers, was forced from the throne, and exiled to Gyodong 喬桐, a small island near Ganghwado Island where he died on the sixth day in the eleventh month of 1506.

After being dethroned, the king was stripped of the title of king (wang 王) and demoted to prince (gun 君) on the second day of the ninth month of 1506. However, since he was inarguably the tenth king of the Joseon Dynasty, at least from a modern perspective, it makes more sense that he is called King Yeonsangun. King Yeonsangun endured a biased view from later historiographers. For one example, the records of his reign were not called “veritable records” (sillok 實錄), as with other Joseon kings; they are merely “daily records” (ilgi 日記).

The Records, which cover the twelve years of his reign, began to be compiled immediately after his death and were completed in the ninth month of 1509. Much of the content is short and simple; this is because a large amount of source material was lost as a result of King Yeonsangun’s persecution of literati as well as historiographers, who he thought condemned his policy and life. In fact, the neutrality of the Records has long been questioned. Modern historians speculate that the violence attributed to King Yeonsangun was exaggerated by the historiographers, who were unfavorable to the king and thus conceal a number of facts, under his successor King Jungjong 中宗 (r. 1506-1544).

Despite these limitations, the Records carries great significance as a historical source because they include two important political incidents. The first is the conflict between the Old Meritorious Faction (hungupa 勳舊派) and the Neo-Confucian Faction (sarimpa 士林派), a feud which had already begun during the reign of King Seongjong. The second is the conflict between the court’s power, centered around the royal in-laws (the queens and their families), and that of the literati, centered around the State Council. Furthermore, the text has attracted much public attention as it was adapted into a variety of historical novels, dramas, and films about his life and reign.

The content of the Records can be divided into three parts. The first, spanning the years between the enthronement (1494) and the Muo Purge (1498), consists mainly of memorials submitted by the Office of the Inspector-General and the Censorate concerning their demand of Confucian statesmanship and opposition to the law for certifying Buddhist monks (doseungbeop 度僧法) and land ownership by Buddhist temples. The second part, spanning the years between the Muo Literati Purge (1498) and the Gapja Literati Purge (1504), includes not only memorials submitted by inspectors and censors but also the king’s responses. The final part, spanning the years between the Gapja Purge (1504) and Yeonsangun’s ultimate dethronement and exile (1506), deals mainly with the king’s immoral life, such as his bizarre acts of revelry and persecution of the ministers involved in the purges. Apart from this, the text also includes copious amounts of the king’s poetry and prose, along with poems written in response by his officials.

Modern Korean editions of the Records have been produced in both South and North Korea. The South Korean version, based on the Taebaeksan edition, was translated between 1972 and 1976 by the first graduates of the Institute for the Translation of Korean Classics 國譯硏修院. The North Korean version, based on the Jeoksangsan edition, was published in 1982 by scholars from the National Classics Research Center 民族古典硏究所 at the Institute of Social Science 社會科學院.

The English translation introduced in this paper covers Chapter One, which begins with the twenty-fifth day and ends on the twenty-ninth day of the twelfth month of 1494. They are but a small portion of the Records, which comprise a total of forty-six chapters in sixty-three volumes. Nevertheless, its contents are noteworthy because they reveal not only the discord between King Yeonsangun and his vassals concerning Buddhist rituals, but also the clash between the Old Meritorious Faction and the Neo-Confucian Faction as seen in response to the memorials submitted by Yu Jagwang 柳子光 (1439-1512). Above all, this English translation offers foreign readers valuable information about the funeral rites of the Joseon dynasty, thanks to its detailed depictions of the processes involved in the funeral of King Seongjong 成宗 (r. 1457-1494). This sample translation is expected to provide the groundwork for a complete English translation of the Records in the future.