In the history of China, annals were a manuscript that was kept to
record chronologically the daily accounts and national affairs of
emperors during reign. Ming dynasty also compiled its annals according
to the tradition of previous empires. When emperors died, successors
usually made a collection of departmental materials and local literatures
of the predecessors' time and published them following the
conventional examples of their ancestral rulers. As a result, the histories
of thirteen emperors were fully written in the annals of Taejo to
Heejong.
The annals of Ming dynasty were also brought to Chosun. In the
29th year of Sunjo reign, an envoy to Peking bought the annals of Ming
dynasty and returned to chosun with the annals the following year. Yet
the location of ‘The Annals of Ming Dynasty’ is unknown at the present
time. According to the research of a Japanese scholar, the annals were
transferred to Bongmodang of the Changdok palace and preserved
there in the late time of Japanese Occupation, after the Occupations,
their whereabouts was missing. All one could confirm the present
moment are only few of film materials of ‘The Annals of Ming Dyansty’, pictured in 1933. To day, the only way to obtain the information of
the films is by logging in the Korean History On-Line System and
putting in the search term.