samhan.ai
A sŏsan 書算 서산, the Chosŏn reading counter: a strip of paper cut into flaps, one turned each time a text was read through. Three turned; the fourth, in crimson, mid-turn.

samhan.ai

Computational Inquiry into Medieval and Early Modern Korea

A research site by Javier Cha

samhan.ai brings together digital scholarly editions, structured historical data, research applications, and computational experiments for the study of medieval and early modern Korea. These projects and curated datasets explore forms of reading and historical inquiry that move between individual records and larger bodies of evidence, allowing broader patterns to remain traceable to the particular sources from which they emerge.

Applications1

Sebo世譜 세보BETA]

Id
SH/A1
Period
900–1500
Version
0.9

A provenance-centred workbench for cleaning, reconciling, and exploring medieval Korean historical data. Modular source collections remain independently inspectable, while LLM-assisted entity recognition proposes matches for human verification before records are linked across sources.

3 corpora · 13 sources2026-08 sebo.samhan.ai →

Experiments1

Relinkings ALPHA]

Id
SH/X1
Period
900–1476
Version
0.2

A computational environment for discovering patterns of structural endogamy in medieval Korean genealogical data, following Douglas R. White’s work on marital relinking chains and loops. Version 0.2 begins with The Andong Kwŏn Genealogy of 1476: relinking chains and loops, patrilateral and matrilateral types, the P-graph, the endogamous core, a block model, a null model, and a reader’s apparatus for what the print does not say.

1 genealogy · 7,580 people · 8,636 ties2026-08 relinkings.samhan.ai →

Data6

The Andong Kwŏn Genealogy of 1476安東權氏成化譜 안동권씨성화보]

Id
SH/D1
Period
1476
Version
1.0
Verified
100%

A digital critical edition. The oldest extant comprehensive Korean genealogy, edited from the Academy of Korean Studies facsimile, with an inspection apparatus that checks the structured data against the original leaf by leaf.

facsimile · node and edge tables · notebooks2025-06-20GitHub ↗ andongkwon1476.samhan.ai

Koryŏ Epitaphs高麗墓誌銘 고려묘지명BETA]

Id
SH/D2
Period
918–1392
Version
0.4

A structured corpus in five parallel layers. From the reading of the stone to the extracted relations, with a non-destructive overlay: no layer above may alter the layer beneath it, and the reading of the stone is never rewritten.

341 documents · 5 layers2026-08 epitaphs.samhan.ai

Kinship data from Koryŏsa biographies高麗史 列傳]

Id
SH/D3
Records
4,623
Read by
SH/A1

1,451 biographies read.

2,717 nodes · 1,906 edges

Examination rosters to 1494榜目]

Id
SH/D4
Records
4,336
Read by
SH/A1

Reconciled against the AKS database.

3,540 nodes · 796 edges

Sillok obituaries實錄 卒記]

Id
SH/D5
Records
2,833
Read by
SH/A1

In preparation.

1,581 nodes · 1,252 edges

Kinship data from Koryŏsa Chŏryo高麗史節要]

Id
SH/D6
Records
1,589
Read by
SH/A1

In preparation.

778 nodes · 811 edges

Colophon

samhan.ai is created and maintained by Javier Cha.

Text
CC BY 4.0
Data
CC0
Code
MIT

The mark

The samhan.ai mark takes its form from a sŏsan 書算 서산, a Chosŏn reading counter made from a strip of paper cut into flaps. One was turned each time a text was read from beginning to end. In the mark, three have been turned; a fourth, in crimson, is caught mid-turn.

Cite

Cha, Javier. Samhan.ai: Computational Inquiry into Medieval and Early Modern Korea. samhan.ai. Accessed 29 August 2026.