Samguk Sagi
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| Author | Kim Busik |
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| Original title | 삼국사기 (三國史記) |
| Country | Goryeo |
| Language | Classical Chinese |
| Subject | History of Korea |
| Genre | Ancient history |
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Publication date
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1145 |
Samguk Sagi (삼국사기, 三國史記, History of the Three Kingdoms) is a historical record of the Three Kingdoms of Korea: Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla. The Samguk Sagi is written in Classical Chinese, the written language of the literati in ancient Korea, and its compilation was ordered by Goryeo's King Injong (r. 1122-1146) and undertaken by the government official and historian Kim Busik (金富軾) and a team of junior scholars. It was completed in 1145. It is well known in Korea as the oldest surviving chronicle of Korean history.
In taking on the task of compiling the Samguk Sagi ("compiling" is more accurate than "writing" because much of the history is taken from earlier historical records), Kim Busik was consciously modeling his actions on Chinese Imperial traditions, just as he modeled the history’s format after its Chinese forebears.
Specifically, he was harking back to the work of Sima Qian, an official of the former Han Dynasty (206 BCE-24 CE). Nowadays known as the Records of the Grand Historian, this work was released circa 100 BCE under the more modest title of Shǐjì 史記, i.e. Scribe's Records. By allusion, Kim Busik called his own work 三國史記, i.e. Samguk Sagi, where Sagi (nowadays 사기) was the Korean reading of the Chinese Shǐjì.
Adopted as well from Chinese historiographical tradition was the classic four-part division of the standard dynastic history into Annals (bongi, 本紀), Tables (pyo, 表), Monographs (ji, 志), and Biographies (yeoljeon, 列傳).
There were various motivating factors behind the compilation of the Samguk Sagi in the 12th century. These may roughly be categorized as ideological and political. The ideological factors are made manifest in the work's preface, written by Kim Busik, where the historian states,
In this quote can be discerned two clear motives. One was to fill the vast gap in knowledge concerning Korea's Three Kingdom Era. Though each of the three kingdoms of Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla had produced their own histories, these were largely lost in the continual wars, the fall of Goguryeo and Baekje, and the dispersal of their records. The other motive was to produce a history that would serve to educate native Korean literati in native history, and provide them with Korean exemplars of Confucian virtues. This was especially important in mid-Goryeo as that dynasty became increasingly Confucianized. Lee 1984, p. 167
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