Geumo Sinhwa (New Tales from Mount Geumo)金鰲新話

Kim Siseup · About 1465–1470 · Korea · 5 pieces · 17,623 Chinese characters

The oldest work of fiction in Chinese written in Korea, and the first book of Joseon to enter this shelf. Kim Siseup turned his back on the world and made it while hiding on Mount Geumo at Gyeongju. All five pieces are of the living meeting the dead, this world meeting the next — a man throws jeopo dice with the Buddha and wins a wife, who turns out to be the soul of a woman killed by Japanese raiders (A Game of Jeopo at Manboksa); a bond made over a wall is cut by the Red Turban bandits, and the woman comes back as a soul (The Scholar Yi Peers Over the Wall); a woman met at Bubyeokjeong says she is a daughter of Gija and tells how the kingdom was lost to Wiman (Drunken Revels at Bubyeokjeong). In A Tale of Yeombuju to the South a Confucian scholar sits face to face with King Yama and argues over ghosts and rebirth, and in A Record of a Banquet at the Dragon Palace a man is summoned to the dragon king's feast to write a ridge-beam text. The hero of all five is a scholar shut out from office, and those who know his worth are only in the other world.

Five chapters and 193 paragraphs fully translated. The graph counts were matched against the source text chapter by chapter, and all five chapters were confirmed to differ by not a single graph (17,623 graphs). The source text carries no PD-old or textquality mark. Five hundred and thirty years have passed since Kim Siseup died, so there is no question of rights, but it is not stated which edition the keyed-in text follows, or how far it was matched against one. The Geumo Sinhwa was lost in Joseon and came out again in Japan, so weighing the editions may call for more work later on. The source text uses Western marks in a classical Chinese text (880 full stops, 204 colons, 319 quotation marks). Classical Chinese has no marks of its own, so these were put there by whoever keyed it in; they were therefore settled on full-width forms, so that nothing looks out of place on the reading screen (. → 。, : → ：, side quotes → 「」). Not one graph was touched, and the matching was set to make the same choice, so that the matching would not be dulled. There are five places where a graph is missing in the source text; rather than filling them in by guess, they are left as □ and stated at that place. There are other places as well where a sound is written in Korean letters instead of a Chinese graph.

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Summoned to the Feast of the Dragon Palace

Yonggung buyeollok — A Banquet at the Dragon Palace龍宮赴宴錄 · 35 passages · 4,036 Chinese characters

A Record of the Southern Continent of Fire

Namyeombujuji — The Southern Land of Fire南炎浮州志 · 42 passages · 3,595 Chinese characters

Drunken Revel at Bubyeok Pavilion

Chwiyu Bubyeokjeonggi — A Drunken Outing at Bubyeok Pavilion醉遊浮碧亭記 · 25 passages · 2,926 Chinese characters

Yi Saeng Peers over the Wall

Isaeng gyujangjeon — Scholar Yi Peers Over the Wall李生窺牆傳 · 45 passages · 3,678 Chinese characters

The Dice Game at Manboksa

Manboksa jeopogi — The Dice Game at Manboksa萬福寺摴蒲記 · 46 passages · 3,388 Chinese characters