I AM VERY pleased that my book A Unique Banchado: The Documentary Painting, with Commentary, of King Jeongjo’s Royal Procession to Hwaseong in 1795 is to be published in the United Kingdom. This book offers an abridged version of the Wonhaeng eulmyo jeongni uigwe, a multi-volume work of some 1,300 pages compiled by the Joseon royal court which recorded with meticulous detail the eight-day trip to Hwaseong made by King Jeongjo in 1795.

Jeongjo is the twenty-second king of the Joseon Dynasty, who is revered as one of the great kings of Korea on account of his accomplishments in reviving the nation in the late eighteenth century. In 1795, accompanied by his mother Lady Hyegyeong, Jeongjo visited the new city of Hwaseong in order to pay his respects to his father’s tomb which had been relocated there, but also to celebrate the sixtieth birthday of his mother, and, in addition, to hold various events with a view to boosting the spirits of the people. The impressive scenes of the majestic royal procession of the king and a large retinue of around 1,800 subjects are vividly illustrated in woodcuts included in the original Uigwe title.

The Joseon Dynasty had a tradition of recording details of royal events and ceremonies in a unique form of documentation, known as Uigwe. Around 4,000 volumes of Uigwe have survived, with about 3,500 volumes being inscribed in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. Indeed, Korea’s documentary tradition has a worldwide reputation, as evidenced by the inscription of thirteen titles of Korean documentary heritage including Uigwe in the Memory of the World Register of UNESCO, making Korea the largest contributor of documentary heritage titles among Asian member states of UNESCO.

Compared to neighboring China and Japan, Korea’s history and traditional culture have been less widely known to the world. I very much hope, therefore, that this book in English translation will be of interest and value to as wide a readership as possible, enabling them to appreciate a little better the rich qualities of Korean culture, as represented in the Uigwe presented in this book, and of course the rise in popularity of Korean pop culture.