Munjip Metrics

Korean literary collections (Hanguk munjip chonggan) counted work by work, with a reliability card on every number

Scope: 1,249 collections (first series 663, supplement 586) adopted from the 1,251 Hanguk munjip chonggan entries on data.go.kr. Translations and the ITKC website content are not used, and no full text is reproduced; each work links to the ITKC database. Centuries follow the author's birth year.

What was counted. The full XML text of the 1,249 collections of the Hanguk munjip chonggan (facsimile edition transcribed by the ITKC) was split into works — one poem, one letter, one epitaph, the ITKC's final unit — giving 637,203 works, each with its title, writer, genre class (assigned by the ITKC), character counts (text/notes) and translation links. A collection prints the author's writing together with prefaces, postscripts, biographies and elegies by others, so works whose writer tag is the collection's author are called own works (609,494, 95.7%) and the rest works by others; genre shares use own works only. Vocabulary and themes of the text were not analyzed and no text is reproduced; every work links to the ITKC database. Centuries follow the author's birth year. What you can do here: follow trends by century (23 metric pages), open a page for each of the 1,249 collections and a sortable list, read ten person pages, and download every table as CSV.

Key points

1. 1,249 collections, 637,203 works, 183 million characters. 62% of the authors' own works are poems, but only 19% of characters.
2. Among own works, poetry falls from 88% (15th century) to 42% (19th) while letters rise from 1% to 30%; the median work grows from 56 to 157 characters.
3. 93% of 81,842 letters name an addressee in the title: 34,890 distinct addressees summed over collections, and the per-collection median share taken by the top three addressees among addressed letters is 41%.
4. 49% of authors link to the civil-examination roster — 83% of those born in the 15th century, 22% in the 19th. Median age at passing: 30.
5. Median lag from death to printing: 66 years — 175 for authors born in the 15th century, 15 for the 19th.

of authors' own works are poetry

49%

of authors linked to the exam roster

Every number carries a reliability card: whether it was counted straight from the source XML, set against a published figure, or measured on a coded sample.

Size

Collections, works and characters. Characters are counted separately for the main text and for notes (original notes, collation and marginal notes).

Works per collection637,203works · 1,249 collections637,203 works in 1,249 collections; the median collection has 339.Characters per collection182.9Mcharacters incl. 5.5M in notes177.4 million characters of text and 5.5 million in notes (3.0%); the median collection has about 80,000.Collections by century382collections by authors born in the 16th century — the mostBy the author's birth century the collections cluster in the 16th (382), 17th (353) and 18th (272); authors born up to the 14th century account for 48 collections and the 19th century for 82.Characters per work75median of the 9 century medians, characters per workThe median work has 56 characters (one seven-syllable regulated verse) in the 13th–16th centuries, then 75 in the 17th, 118 in the 18th and 157 in the 19th; the 9th century (Choe Chi-won, 168) and the 12th (80) are exceptions.Share of characters in notes3.0%of all characters are in notesNotes make up 3.0% of all characters, between 1.9% (19th century) and 4.1% (16th) in every century except the 9th (Choe Chi-won, 11.6%).Share of own works95.7%of all works are by the collection's author95.7% of works are by the author; the rest are prefaces, postscripts, biographies, elegies and appendices by others.Fascicles and works per fascicle691/851collections whose fascicle count matches the introductionOf the 851 collections whose introduction states 'n fascicles, n volumes', 691 (81%) have exactly n '卷n' headings in the table of contents.

Genre composition

Counts the genre classification the ITKC attached to every work (7 major, 28 minor classes). Headline shares use the author's own works only — works whose writer tag is the collection's author, as opposed to prefaces, postscripts, biographies and elegies by others that are printed in the same collection.

Share of poetry62.0%of own works are poetry (by works, all centuries)62.0% of the authors' own 609,494 works are poems.Seven-class genre mix13.4%share of the second-largest class, lettersOf own works: poetry 62.0%, letters 13.4%, miscellany 9.1%, court documents 5.6%, biographies 3.7%, elegies 3.2%, prefaces 3.0%.Share of letters13.4%of own works are lettersLetters are 13.4% of own works: 0.3–2.5% in the 12th–15th centuries, then 5.7% (16th), 15.0% (17th), 15.1% (18th) and 30.2% (19th); the 9th century (Choe Chi-won) stands at 32.9%.Share of court documents5.6%of own works are court documentsCourt documents (memorials, examination answers, edicts) are 5.6% of own works: 42% in the 9th century (Choe Chi-won), 9.1% and 8.7% in the 12th and 13th, 5.8% and 7.7% in the 16th and 17th, 2.4% in the 19th.Share of elegies, epitaphs and biographies6.4%of own works commemorate othersWorks commemorating others (elegies, epitaphs, biographies) are 6.4% of own works, rising from about 2% in the 14th–15th centuries to 6.3% (17th), 8.3% (18th) and 9.8% (19th).Share of prefaces and postscripts3.0%of own works are prefaces and postscriptsPrefaces and postscripts are 3.0% of own works: under 2% through the 16th century except the 13th (3.3%), then 4.6% in the 18th and 5.6% in the 19th.Residual 'other' share6.4%of own works are in an 'other' class6.4% of own works sit in an 'other' minor class, between 2.8% (15th century) and 12.1% (12th), with the 9th century at 30%.Characters per poem56characters per poem, median of century mediansThe median poem has 56 characters in every century but the 9th (40) — the length of one seven-syllable regulated verse.

Relationship genres

Addressees of letters and subjects of epitaphs and biographies, parsed from titles as strings. Version 1.0 does not identify persons: the same person called by courtesy name, pen name or office counts as different strings.

Letter addressees and concentration34,890addressee strings across 895 collectionsIn the 895 collections with letters, 93.4% of the 81,842 letters carry an addressee string in the title.Subjects of epitaphs and biographies19,789epitaphs and biographies by the authors880 collections contain 19,789 epitaphs and biographies by the author; a subject string was parsed from 93.6% (17,972 distinct summed over collections, 15,440 corpus-wide).Other writers17,675other writers contributing (summed over collections)1,120 collections carry 27,709 works by writers other than the author; summed over collections that is 17,675 writers, a median of 8 per collection.

Authors and publication

Author dates, linkage to the civil-examination roster, the lag between death and publication, and translation and punctuation progress.

Date completeness and lifespan98.4%of authors have both birth and death yearsOf 1,248 authors, 1,240 have a birth year, 1,231 a death year and 1,228 (98.4%) both.Examination linkage and age at passing49.1%of authors linked to the examination roster49.1% of the 1,248 authors (613) link to a passer in the civil-examination roster (name and birth year 546, first pass of a re-examined person 65, courtesy or pen name 2): 83% of those born in the 15th century, 62% (16th), 52% (17th), 30% (18th), 22% (19th).Publication lag66years from death to printing (median)1,038 collections have a printing year and 1,026 also a death year to measure the lag.Linked-translation progress16.6%of works have a linked translation · 1,105 collections with none16.6% of works have a linked translation; 1,105 collections have none (585 of the 586 supplement collections).Collation and punctuation progress6.5%of works have a collated and punctuated edition6.5% of works have a linked collated and punctuated edition, concentrated in 58 collections.

Centuries

Works per century; see the Centuries menu.