Evidence · Memory · Revision
Sources & Method
How the archive evaluates evidence, names uncertainty, protects family material, and keeps every account open to correction.
The archive works in two evidentiary worlds. Its public history of Korea depends on claims that readers can trace to scholarship and records. Its protected family collection also preserves testimony, inherited stories, photographs, and documents whose meaning may be intimate or incomplete. The forms of evidence differ; the obligation to label them honestly does not.
The evidence standard
For Korean history, the archive begins with archaeology, peer-reviewed scholarship, museums, documentary archives, and primary records. Official accounts are useful but not automatically neutral. When states or institutions are interested parties, their claims are checked against independent research and evidence from more than one source tradition.
Sources before certainty
A source is identified as closely as practical, and major claims should be independently checkable. Exact dates and numbers are used only when the surviving evidence supports that precision.
Context before verdict
Sources are read in the political and social worlds that produced them. Later chronicles, colonial records, government statements, and family recollections can all preserve knowledge while also reflecting purpose, position, and memory.
Editorial rule: where the record permits several readings, the archive states the disagreement rather than manufacturing certainty.
How confidence is signaled
The public history uses four plain-language levels. These labels describe the strength of a claim, not the importance of the subject.
High confidence
Broadly established by strong evidence or several independent source families—for example, major dynastic chronology, Japanese annexation, the 1945 occupation boundary, the 1950 invasion, and the 1953 armistice.
Moderate confidence
Supported, but limited by incomplete evidence or uncertain causal weight—for example, the scale of prehistoric migration or precise estimates for North Korea’s famine and economy.
Disputed
Actively contested among qualified scholars or entangled with nationalist interpretation—for example, deeper language relationships and some claims about early Gojoseon and Lelang.
Tradition, not verified chronology
Culturally and historically meaningful, but not confirmed as a literal dated event. Dangun’s traditional founding of Gojoseon in 2333 BCE belongs in this category.
These distinctions shape Korea: The Long History and the companion Timeline.
Family evidence: preserve the voice, label the source
Family history often survives in forms that cannot be treated like a government record or scholarly article. That does not make it disposable. It makes careful attribution essential. Entries in the protected family collection will distinguish:
- Documented fact: supported by a record, photograph, letter, certificate, inscription, or other surviving object.
- Firsthand recollection: remembered by the person who experienced it, with the speaker and recording date identified when possible.
- Inherited family story: passed through others, with the chain of transmission recorded when known.
- Editorial inference: a reasoned connection made from partial evidence and explicitly marked as interpretation.
- Unresolved: unknown, contradictory, or awaiting more evidence.
Conflicting memories may be preserved side by side. A later correction can change the account without erasing the fact that an earlier version existed.
Privacy and evidence are separate questions. Protected access limits who may read family material; it does not make that material more or less certain. The access method may evolve, while the distinction between public history and the protected family collection remains.
The protected family collection remains closed while its access controls are prepared and tested.
Names, dates, and translations
Korean names and places often appear in several English spellings. The archive uses a consistent modern romanization for orientation while retaining historically important, source-specific, or family-preferred spellings when they help identify a person or record. Original Hangul or Chinese characters may be included when known.
Approximate dates remain approximate. A transcription reproduces wording; a translation interprets it across languages. When the distinction matters, the archive identifies who transcribed or translated a source and notes uncertain readings rather than silently resolving them.
Limits of the record
Research on ancient Korea is uneven because surviving evidence and access to excavations differ across South Korea, North Korea, and northeastern China. Early written accounts were sometimes compiled centuries after the events they describe. Modern Korean history is also politically contested, and reliable quantitative evidence about North Korea remains limited. These constraints are stated where they affect the story.
Revision, credit, and care
This is a living archive, not a finished authority. Citations, image credits, permissions, and acknowledgments will accompany material as it is added. Substantive corrections should identify what is changing and, when possible, the evidence behind the change.
Relatives may offer context, identify people or places, challenge an interpretation, or ask that sensitive family material be restricted or removed. Stewardship includes knowing when not to publish.
For the archive’s purpose and boundaries, read About This Archive. To see the method in practice, begin with Korea: The Long History.