Twice ToldTaejong Sillok, year 2, month 11, day 8: the killing of Pak Sun
- Language
- Chinese
- Reading
- transcribed from the page image
- Translation
- ours
- Retrieved
- 10 October 2026
The only entry in the Veritable Records of King Taejong about the death of the envoy Pak Sun, the man the later Hamhung chasa story is built around. The Records were compiled after the events, in the reign that followed Taejong’s; the National Institute of Korean History serves the text, a modern Korean translation and the page image of the Taebaeksan print. We read the line against the page image. The print has no punctuation; the marks below are the Institute’s.
○丁亥/遣上護軍朴淳于東北面, 被殺于彼軍中。 淳至咸州, 敎都巡問使朴蔓及州郡守令, 勿從思義, 遂被殺于彼軍中。
Translation
On the dinghai day the king sent the senior guard general Pak Sun to the Northeast Circuit, and he was killed in that army there. When Sun reached Hamju he told the chief circuit commissioner Pak Man and the district magistrates not to follow Sa-ui, and so he was killed in that army.
Notes
- The entry is dated by the day-sign 丁亥 (dinghai in Chinese, jeonghae in Korean) in the eleventh month of Taejong’s second year, which the Institute’s heading gives as the 8th day. We have not converted the date to the Gregorian calendar.
- 上護軍 (sang hogun) is a senior guard command. The entry gives Pak Sun this rank; Kim Su-hang said in 1686 that the Sillok called him daejanggun (see sources.md, where sources disagree).
- 思義 is Cho Sa-ui, magistrate of Anbyeon, who had raised troops three days earlier (Taejong 2/11/5). 朴蔓 (Pak Man) was the chief circuit commissioner (都巡問使) of the northeast, the senior official of the circuit with both civil and military authority. The entry does not call the army rebels in so many words; it says 彼軍, “that army”, and the Institute’s heading calls it Cho Sa-ui’s rebel army.
- The entry says nothing about Taejo, a lodging, a river or a ferry. 軍中 can mean “within the army” or “in camp”; the entry does not say where in Hamju he was killed.
- The next entry of the same day (kca_10211008_002) reports that Taejo’s carriage had passed the Cheollyeong pass; the entry after that is about the petition to exile Yi Bang-gan.