Queen Seonjeong

Who he is

Name

Seonjeong (of the Gangneung Kim clan)

Title

Queen consort of Sinjong

Since

Married before 1181; queen from Sinjong's accession in 1197

Born

not known

Family

Gangneung Kim clan (Silla royal descent, seat at Myeongju); father not named in the English page

Confidence

medium

English Wikipedia (Sinjong page)

What it holds

• The queen's household and its estates (not described in our sources)

Allies and rivals

Her son the crown prince; the Gangneung Kim and the Jangheung Im (the king's mother's clan) at court.

How things stand that morning

Alive and in the palace. No political act of hers is recorded for 1197 to 1200 in the pages we could read.

Threats

• Choe's treatment of the crown princess (the 1197 to 1198 affair touched her son's household)

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: Only the English Sinjong and Myeongjong pages; her death date and father are not pinned.

On the map: No land drawn.

Primary sources for Goryeo

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• Essentials of the History of Goryeo, Kim Jong-seo (金宗瑞) and the Joseon history office (1452). The chronological companion to the Goryeosa, finished a year after it and drawing on the same lost records, sometimes with entries the Goryeosa omits. Read online
• Continuation of the Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government, Bi Yuan (畢沅), completed by Feng Jiwu after his death (late eighteenth century, finished after 1801, from Song and Yuan sources). A Qing scholar's continuous month-by-month chronicle of the Song and Yuan centuries, compiled from the Song shi, the Liao, Jin and Yuan histories, Li Tao, Li Xinchuan and other Song sources. Read online
• History of Goryeo, Jeong Inji (鄭麟趾), Kim Jong-seo (金宗瑞) and the Joseon history office (completed 1451, from the Goryeo veritable records and earlier drafts). The official history of Goryeo, compiled by the Joseon state from the lost Goryeo veritable records. Read online
• History of the Jin, Toqto'a (脫脫) and the Yuan history office, with Ouyang Xuan among the chief compilers (1343 to 1344, from the Jin veritable records and the Jin national history). The official history of the Jurchen empire that ruled north China and Manchuria in 1200. Read online
• History of the Song, the chapters on Xia and on foreign states, Toqto'a (脫脫) and the Yuan history office (1343 to 1345). The Song court's accounts of its neighbours, each arranged as an annal of embassies and wars. Read online
• Draft Compilation of the Collected Statutes of the Song, Various; the Song huiyao were compiled by the Song state, the surviving draft reassembled by Xu Song from the Yongle dadian in the nineteenth century (the original Song compilations date from the eleventh to the thirteenth century; the surviving extracts were recovered in 1809 to 1820 and printed in 1936). Dated extracts from the Song government's own statute collections, arranged by office. Read online
• Description of the Foreign Peoples (Chau Ju-kua), Zhao Rukuo (趙汝适) (about 1225, while superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou). The Song customs officer's survey of the overseas world, compiled from merchants and from Zhou Qufei, a generation after 1200 but describing trade routes that were the same in 1200. Read online
• Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country (Yi Gyu-bo), Yi Gyu-bo (李奎報) (poems and prose from the 1190s to 1241; collected and printed by his son in 1241, with a supplement in 1242). The collected poems, letters, memorials and essays of a Goryeo scholar who was thirty-two and still seeking office in 1200. Read online

2 more in the sources library for Korea and Japan.