An Jeong-bok’s Dongsa gangmok

An Jeong-bok completed the Dongsa gangmok, a history from Gojoseon to the end of Goryeo in outline-and-details form that set out an independent line of legitimacy for Korean history.

An Jeong-bok, a Southerner Silhak scholar and disciple of Yi Ik, spent some twenty years on the work at Gwangju in Gyeonggi and completed it around 1778. He used the gangmok form, separating main headings (gang) from detailed entries (mok).

He traced a legitimate line from Dangun Joseon through Gija Joseon, Mahan and Unified Silla to Goryeo, treating the Three Kingdoms as a period without a legitimate line. He sought a lineage of Korean history not centred on China and stressed critical comparison of sources.