• The Korean Journal of Archival Studies
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• no.22
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• pp.115-155
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• 2009

As Korea was merged into Japan, the official documents during Kabo Reform and The Great Han Empire time were handed over to the Government-General of Chosun and reclassified from section based to ministry based. However they had been reclassified before many times. The footprints of reclassification can be found in the classification stamps and warehouse number stamps which remained on the cover of official documents from Kabo Reform to The Great Han Empire. They classified the documents by Section in the classification system of Ministry-Department-Section, stamped and numbered them. It is consistent with the official document classification system in The Great Han Empire, which shows the section based classification was maintained. Although they stamped by Section and numbered the documents, there were differences in sub classification system by Section. In the documents of Land Tax Section, many institutions can be found. The documents of the same year can be found in different group and documents of similar characteristics are classified in the same group. Customs Section and Other Tax Section seemed to number their documents according to the year of documents. However the year and the order of 'i-ro-ha(イロハ) song' does not match. From Kabo Reform to The Great Han Empire the documents were grouped by Section. However they did not have classification rules for the sub units of Section. Therefore, it is not clear if the document grouping of classification stamps can be understood as the original order of official document classification system of The Great Han Empire. However, given the grouping method reflects the document classification system, the sub section classification system of the Great Han Empire can be inferred through the grouping method. In this inference, it is understood that the classification system was divided into two such as 'Section - Counterpart Institution' and 'Section - Document Issuance Year'. The Government-General of Chosun took over the official documents of The Great Han Empire, stored them in the warehouse and marked them with Warehouse Number Stamps. Warehouse Number Stamp contained the Institution that grouped those documents and the documents were stored by warehouse. Although most of the documents on the shelves in each warehouse were arranged by classification stamp number, some of them were mixed and the order of shelves and that of documents did not match. Although they arranged the documents on the shelves and gave the symbols in the order of 'i-ro-ha(イロハ) song', these symbols were not given by the order of number. During the storage of the documents by the Government-General of Chosun, the classification system according to the classification stamps was affected. One characteristic that can be found in warehouse number stamps is that the preservation period on each document group lost the meaning. The preservation period id decided according to the historical and administrative value. However, the warehouse number stamps did not distinguish the documents according to the preservation period and put the documents with different preservation period on one shelf. As Japan merged Korea, The Great Han Empire did not consider the official documents of the Great Han Empire as administrative documents that should be disposed some time later. It considered them as materials to review the old which is necessary for the colonial governance. As the meaning of the documents has been changed from general administrative documents to the materials that they would need to govern the colony, they dealt with all the official documents of The Great Han Empire as the same object regardless of preservation period. The Government-General of Chosun destroyed the classification system of the Great Han Empire which was based on Section and the functions in the Section by reclassifying them according to Ministry when they reclassified the official documents during Kobo Reform and the Great Han Empire in order to utilize them to govern the colony.