Old Chosun was an ancient Korean Kingdom which existed centuries before Christ, and had resided over Manchuria and the Korean peninsula for a long time. Despite the verisimilitude and lengthy existence, scarcity of relevant primary sources has always hindered historians from conducting thorough investigations. In other words, due to the inherent lack of these sources, researchers must challenge the inevitable. In this regard, Father R?gis’s records intrigue many historians, for they offer unknown albeit invaluable primary sources to the entire research field.

Not all historical records are given the same weight and credibility. Due to the lack of reliability, some of them lose historical value despite their antiquity, while others suffer the same fate via bias. Yet Father R?gis’s writing verifies its own value and credibility in several aspects. Neither Chinese nor Korean, Father R?gis, a scholarly eighteenth-century French Jesuit missionary, received an elite education at the heart of European culture. Despite being prone to Sino-centric biases due to his long stay in the Middle Kingdom, as well as his intimate relationship with Chinese mandarins, scholars, and court librarians who may have consciously and subconscious directed his interpretation of the sources, his missives tell us drastically different stories from what has been taught and learned about the first state in the history of Korea. Conveying historical preponderance, Father R?gis’s accounts dovetail with what had been written and told by a handful of secondary sources, including Shindanminsa (History of Sacred Dangun’s People) and Shindansilgi (Authentic Records of Sacred Dangun), which Korean militant nationalist independence fighters such as Kim Kyo-Hun (金敎獻) and Yu Gun(柳瑾) wrote for their posterity during the Japanese occupation period.

Yu Jung-Hee (Thomas F. G. Yu: 柳正熙) and Jung Eun-Woo(鄭殷友), the two commentators of Father R?gis’s writing, majored in history at the undergraduate and graduate levels?a fact that assures reliability of their interpretations with easy-to-understand explanations. Notably, Yu is one of few historians studying the three early dynasties (Xia-Shang-Chou) in Korea. He has been widely known for his book on the Xia, which is the first of its kind to be published in Korea. It has been 18 years since Yu published his first academic work in his early twenties. His specialty and experience in early Chinese history, I suppose, may have helped him possess a bird’s eye view of Korea’s history in this period, and thus may have helped him secure a high degree of objectivity in this book. In addition, it is also worth-while to mention that the two commentators’ abundant foreign experiences will also ensure such a wide viewpoint and subjectivity. There is the possibility that only a few talented Korean historians could intuitively and correctly understand the topic.
It was such a pleasure to read, edit, and publish writing penned and annotated over the course of 300 years by an elite scholar and gifted modern historians who rediscovered the true value of this primary source. The editor, with surety, is expecting that readers will be equally gratified and appreciate the genuine nature of the lost kingdom.