Naebang-gasa Project Week 2-July 21st:

I’m still in the process of categorizing and listing the songs by their respective categories (out of a total of roughly 20 categories, I’ve completed 13). Although it can feel a bit tedious at times, it’s been exciting to observe the variety of poems and songs produced by Joseon-era women, who have been given little-to-no scholarly recognition in Korean and especially Western academia. Sometimes when I get ridiculously bored of sorting documents in my Excel spreadsheet, I pull secondary sources from a previous document I had and sort them into a new tab. I’ve so far discovered a modern Korean translation blog for those interested in Naebang-gasa, which makes it much easier for me to analyze these works given that many are written in old Korean. This is very exciting news. It’s empowering to see that there is a Korean community that is passionate about keeping these works alive, and I hope to eventually share and inspire this same dedication in an English-speaking audience as well.