Samguk Yusa

Samguk yusa (sham.ɡuk̚.ju.sa) or Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms is a collection of legends, folktales and historical accounts relating to the Three Kingdoms of Korea (Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla), as well as to other periods and states before, during and after the Three Kingdoms period. "Samguk yusa is a historical record compiled by the Buddhist monk Il-yeon in 1281 (the 7th year of King Chungnyeol of Goryeo) in the late Goryeo Dynasty." It is the earliest extant record of the Dangun legend, which records the founding of Gojoseon as the first Korean nation. The Samguk yusa is National Treasure No. 306. Samguk yusa is a history book which is composed of five volumes in total and is divided into nine parts within the five volumes. The samguk yusa can be described to the documentation of tales and legends, which are categorised by the two parts such as extraordinary historical events and diverse Buddhist narratives. This book deals with various historical sources such as tales of the Three Kingdoms period, myths, legends, genealogies, histories, and Buddhist tales, and this helped maintain folklore from the medieval history of Korea. At the beginning of Samguk yusa, it is depicted that Dangun Wanggeom, who is a mythological ancestor of all Koreans, founded the first nation of Korea, named Gojoseon and this represents an intention to solidify a sense of national identity as a unified Korean people. The term "yusa" means historically, a supplementary work to an earlier work, so the title of the work explicitly demonstrates the intention of Il-yeon to provide additional information which was not explained in the previous ancient recordings like Samguk sagi which is one of the Korean history books. So, Samguk yusa is supplementarily used with Samguk sagi in Korean historical analysis. Samguk Yusa tried to increase the reliability by using various resources for one theme and by protecting original resources as much as possible, but there were errors in objectivity in terms of unbiased subjects that represent the overall community regardless of religion, region, and social hierarchy.