㉚ The Differences Between the Original Draft and the Jeonseo Edition of the Nanjung Ilgi

The Nanjung Ilgi we read is not a single book.

One is the diary Admiral Yi wrote by his own hand, with a brush, in camp. It is usually called the original draft manuscript.
The other is the diary included in the Yi Chungmugong Jeonseo (The Complete Works of Admiral Yi), published by order of King Jeongjo about 200 years after the Admiral's death. Because it was included in the Jeonseo (Complete Works), it is called the Jeonseo edition for short.

The name "Nanjung Ilgi" (War Diary) was also given at that time. The Admiral did not give his diary a title. Each year he wrote only the sexagenary name of that year, as in "Imjin Diary" or "Gyesa Diary." In 1795, when Yun Haeng-im, Yu Deuk-gong, and others compiled the Complete Works, they bound these diaries together and called them the "Nanjung Ilgi."

Most of the translations of the Nanjung Ilgi we buy in bookstores today combine these two editions.

They take the original draft as the base and fill in the parts where the draft is missing with the Jeonseo edition.

How different, then, are the two editions?

The Jeonseo Edition Softened or Deleted Expressions

The Jeonseo edition did not copy the original draft as it was. The compilers chose what to copy. A good deal of what was in the original draft was left out of the Jeonseo edition.

What was left out was mainly this: the Admiral's private assessments of his superiors and colleagues, and matters concerning his family. Much of his criticism of Won Gyun was also left out. Won Gyun appears in the diary about 120 times, and much of the criticism among those entries cannot be found in the Jeonseo edition.

Reading the footnotes of the Sinjeong Yeokju Yi Chungmugong Jeonseo (a newly revised, annotated translation of the Complete Works), you come across passages like these:

"Lamentable: in the handwritten diary this is written as gasoropda (可笑, laughable)."

"Pitiful: in the original this is written as laughable and pitiful (可笑)."

Gasoropda does not simply mean "funny." It means absurd, contemptible. It is a word loaded with scorn. The compilers of the Complete Works changed this word to "lamentable" and "pitiful." They turned the Admiral's contempt into a sigh.

Looking at translations made from the original draft, you can see how sharply the Admiral wrote.

"Yi Bin, the Border Defense Commissioner, sent an official letter full of nonsense. It is laughable." (Nanjung Ilgi, May 26, 1593)

"The Gyeongsang Naval Commander sent an official letter saying that the enemy at Ungcheon might come into Hokgamdongpo, so we should go in and attack them. His sly scheming is laughable." (Nanjung Ilgi, June 5, 1593)

"Won Gyun, Naval Commander of Gyeongsang Right Province, came. He spat out many sly and treacherous words, which was utterly outrageous." (Nanjung Ilgi, August 28, 1593)

In 1596 he went so far as to write Won Gyun down as wonhyung (元兇). Wonhyung originally means "ringleader of a band of villains." But its first character is the same as Won Gyun's surname, Won (元). It is not hard to guess why the Admiral chose this word.

"I heard from that messenger that the wonhyung had received forty strokes of the cudgel, and the magistrate of Jangheung twenty." (Nanjung Ilgi, March 12, 1596)

The Jeonseo Edition Also Changed Names

The compilers of the Complete Works also changed people's names. The footnotes of the Sinjeong Yeokju Yi Chungmugong Jeonseo explain it this way:

"The compilers of the Complete Works deliberately changed the characters of the names of people involved in unfortunate matters like this, probably out of consideration for the descendants who would read the Complete Works."

In the fourth month of 1597, the name of a man who died of illness is "Hong Sun-gak" in the handwritten diary, but "Hong Eon-sun" in the Complete Works. The footnote notes, "It is unknown with what intention the name was changed."

But the reason can be guessed. The Complete Works was a book made by royal command. It was a book the state made to honor Admiral Yi. For the compilers, it must have been uncomfortable for words in which the Admiral mocked and cursed someone to appear as they were in such a book. The descendants of the people named there were also still alive.

So the compilers polished the Admiral. In place of an Admiral who grew angry, they left an Admiral who sighed.

They probably did not mean any harm. But as a result, the Yi Sun-sin of the Jeonseo edition became a little more saintly, and a little less human, than the real Yi Sun-sin.

Records That Would Have Vanished Without the Jeonseo Edition

We cannot simply blame the Jeonseo edition, though. Some records survived only thanks to it.

The diary for the year Eulmi (1595) is one. The handwritten diary for 1595 does not survive today. It remains only in the Jeonseo edition. Without the Complete Works, the Admiral's whole year of 1595 would have remained a blank for us.

And in 2008 there was another discovery. While deciphering a handwritten copy called the Chungmugong Yusa (Posthumous Writings of Admiral Yi) kept at Hyeonchungsa, the shrine to Admiral Yi, the classical Chinese scholar No Seung-seok found 32 days of diary entries that were in neither the original draft nor the Jeonseo edition: 30 days from 1595, and one day each from 1596 and 1598. (Hankook Ilbo, April 20, 2010; Wikipedia, "Nanjung Ilgi")

Because someone had copied out the handwritten diary separately, those days came back to us 400 years later.

The Admiral Also Rewrote His Own Diary

Finally, there is one more thing. This is a case where it was not someone else but the Admiral himself who rewrote his diary.

For the year Jeongyu (1597), there are two handwritten versions of the diary. One covers April 1 to October 28, and the other covers August 5 to January 4 of the following year. So for about two months, from early August to early October, the entries for the same days were written twice. These are exactly the two months in which the Battle of Myeongnyang took place.

The diary he wrote first contained errors. From July 2 to October 3, he kept writing the sexagenary day names beside the dates incorrectly. This was the period that ran from his service as a common soldier to his reappointment as Naval Commander and on to the Battle of Myeongnyang. It seems he did not even have time to keep count of the days.

In the rewritten diary, the day names are written correctly. The content is also more detailed. The researcher Kim Kyung-soo believes that the Admiral discovered the errors in the diary he had written first and rewrote it from memory when he had some breathing room.

The Admiral did not leave his own record wrong.

What the Two Nanjung Ilgi Tell Us

In an earlier post, "The Nanjung Ilgi: Reading the Extraordinary Hidden in the Ordinary," I wrote that the Admiral's calm sentences made my throat close up.

👉 Related post: ⑪ The Nanjung Ilgi: Reading the Extraordinary Hidden in the Ordinary

But reading the original draft again, I found that the Admiral was not only a calm man.

He was calm about the torture and the gunshot wound he himself suffered, but sharp toward cowards and liars. He wrote words like "laughable," "sly," and "outrageous" without hesitation.

A man who spared words about his own pain, and did not spare them about other men's cowardice. I think this is more like Admiral Yi.

Later generations tried to erase that sharpness and make the Admiral a saint. But the Admiral was not a man who kept a diary in order to become a saint. He was a man who wrote down what happened that day and what he felt that day just as it was. That honesty and humanity remain intact in the original draft, and that is what moves us all the more.

👉 Next post: ㉛ Admiral Yi, Who Fed His Soldiers and His People

— Momcheolhak