A study on collecting and classifying the Chosen literatures and archives of Chosen General Government

조선총독부의 '조선도서 및 고문서'의 수집·분류 활동

Chosen General Government initiated the activities of collecting and managing the archives from Chosen Dynasty because of necessity to push positively for its colonial policies. Particularly, such efforts of the regime resulted eventually in boosting their understanding on the Korea cultures, as well as contributed to their reigning Korea to an extent. Some aspects that reflect it are as follows. In 1910 Chosen General Government took over, and began to arrange and classify huge volumes of archives that were held by the royal family. During this period, they collected and arranged literatures that they took over from the earlier Korean government. In 1913, Chosen General Government increased enormously the varieties and volumes of the archives that they intended to collect. They started with collecting archives limited to those literatures that had existed in the civil sector before 1894. It can be noticed that just in 1913 Chosen General Government revealed their intention to collect and classify both royal archives and civil archives. With the work of collecting, classification and annotating archives, Chosen General Government commenced the compilation of Chosensa (Korean History). These efforts aimed at cultural assimilation and educating of Korean people, and in this process, the importance of Chosen Dynasty's archives was reconfirmed. One of the representative cases was a change of terminology. With the compilation efforts into full swing since 1915, Chosen General Government repeatedly started to use the term 'Saryo' (historical records) in connection with Chosen's literatures and archives. The term 'Saryo' previously had been used in Japanese literatures, and it is deemed that it was used as a term generally referring to archives of Chosen Dynasty from that time. This signifies that Chosen General Government began to involve their historical point of view in approaching to the archives of Chosen. As they broadened their understanding on Korea through the annotation of old literatures and compilation of Chosen History, they seriously set on the work of assimilating Korean people culturally aiming at gripping its reign on Korea. Archives of Chosen likewise were very crucial basic data for understanding Korea and its people, and Chosen General Government is deemed to have utilized the archives as a means to reign and assimilate Korean people.