L.J. Writes

I'm reading a book called Ancient Korean Conceptions of Life and Death (고대 한국인의 생사관), which turns out to be a little bit of a misleading title--in fact the author Na Huira frankly admits that we can't know for sure how ancient Koreans viewed life and death. We have a better idea once they took on more cosmopolitan (and better-documented) beliefs, most prominently Buddhism. This doesn't help me a whole lot, though, since my story takes place centuries before Koreans became Buddhists. Besides, culture probably played a role even after the changes in religious faith, differentiating a Korean Buddhist's beliefs from, say, those of her Vietnamese co-religionist.

( One wedding and one funeral, except not really? )

So this book, while slender and speculative out of necessity, is providing me with some good material. More than the information, though, I like the feel for the ancient Koreans I get from reading. The discussions give me the means to knit together information I already know, like with the Bear Woman myth and marriage as death-rebirth. For some reason I never thought of the myth in terms of a wedding ritual before, though the connection is obvious once I think about it. I look forward to what more I can learn.

Also I dug up a whole bunch of books on the details of Goguryeoh life, and I'm hitting the library so hard once I get a free day. Snoopy dance!

( Yay! )

I am not the first of my line to write about my heroine's times. The celebrated thirteenth-century writer Lee Gyubo (李奎報, 1168~1241) wrote the Lay of the King in the Eastern Light (東明王篇), an epic poem about the first king of Goguryeoh a.k.a. my heroine's second husband. Lee, also known as Master White Cloud (白雲居士) and Lord of Gentle Prose (文順公), is my distant ancestor and one of the founders of my house.*

( Fully illustrated with amateur photography )

That's how I visited an ancestral grave to pay my respects and ask for help. Yes, I am that desperate. It was nice to reconnect with this part of my heritage, and I know whom to blame if this project doesn't pan out.

Postscript: Another ancestor, the 18th-century academic Lee Ik, came up in my research as a scholar on Yemaek groups and the origins of the Korean people. I appear to have a multi-generational obsession on my hands.

"Sole reining queen and foundress in Korean history, she it was who built the two ancient kingdoms of Goguryeo and Baekje."
- Shin Chaeho, Ancient Korean History

Soseono (pronounced so-suh-no. 소서노 [召西奴]; 66 B.C.- 6 B.C.) was a part of the founding of two kingdoms in ancient Korea, Goguryeo and Baekje. She was the queen of the first king of Goguryeo and the mother of the first king of Baekje, but according to some she was far more than a wife and mother of founders but a founder and even ruling queen in her own right. The purpose of this post is to reconstruct the life of this remarkable woman based on reliable historical information.

* For a pronunciation guide and a note on the names see Korean Romanization and Notes on Ancient Names.

( Reliable being a relative term here... )

In the course of researching for my novel, which takes place in ancient Korea and parts of modern-day China, I turned to e-book bookstores among other sources. It seemed an easy start, a way to dip a toe in the waters without devoting too much space and money from the first go.

Unfortunately, that water I was dipping into? Actually sort of scummy. Now I did fish out one excellent book, a work of non-fiction that I liked so much that I read it all the way through even though only a small portion was directly relevant to my research. Unfortunately the other books I found on Google Play were all duds, particularly the historical fiction.

( Bad history, horrible writing, and terrible art )

I am duly traumatized by my attempts to begin research via e-books. I'm not even getting into the nonfiction fails--bad history books based on a known forgery don't even make the cut after all the crap I've been treated to. Now look what you've done it, awful historical fiction--you've raised the bar so high, or sunk it so low, I can't even get a proper hate-on for run-of-the-mill bad books.

So I've begun reading basic information (links to Korean page) about the history of my heroine's people circa 1st century B.C. I've learned this in school, glanced over web pages and so on but now I'm reading with a purpose in mind, namely to learn what kind of people these were and how their worldview and customs might have affected my heroine's story.

One thing that strikes me is that the customs of Buyeo, or Buri, were oppressive as hell by modern standards. Their politics were centered entirely around the nobility, and it seems their subjects were commoners in name but close to slaves in terms of the way they were treated. "Serf" may be the Western equivalent of their status. We know about four articles of Buri's laws, which were:

( Murder, arson, and jaywalking. Or rather, jealousy. )