The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyŏng (Hanjungnok)

Lady Hyegyŏng married the Crown Prince of Korea in 1744, when she was nine years old.

She watched Prince Sado lose his mind, dropping his clothes at random and slaying servants without cause.

She heard the king plot to kill his inconvenient heir as slowly and strangely as possible while his grandson begged for his life.

And as a widow she became the eye of a political maelstrom that destroyed her family — the family she had brought to power by dint of being crown princess.

The Hanjungnok, or “Records in Silence,” is the memoir of a Korean princess known as Lady Hyegyŏng (1735-1815 CE). It remains a classic in contemporary Korea and one of the few pre-modern memoirs by an East Asian woman of life beyond the domestic sphere, according to translator JaHyun Kim Haboush.