Even a cursory glance at only the endnotes of this impressive and somewhat intimidating text reveals that John Jorgensen—as well as copy editor Patricia Crosby—has wrestled with a mighty beast. This collection of Korean political and social prophetic literature, what Jorgensen terms the “Chŏng Kam nok corpus,” consists of deeply arcane texts likely composed by anonymous authors from the eighteenth century to perhaps the early twentieth century. They represent a hybrid of divination practices based on the Yijing, various understandings of the interactions of the yin/ŭm and yang energies, the five phases, and the flows, blockages, and channelings of qi/ki, or “vitality,” in the landscape as understood in the Sino-Korean geomantic arts. The Chŏng Kam nok genre, as Jorgensen points out, is of particular interest because of its insurrectionary nature. These prognostications revolve around the expected collapse of the Chosŏn state in a maelstrom of bloodshed and dislocation that would herald the coming of a “true man” who would establish a new dynasty and a utopian society. These prophecies are encoded in a thick mesh of classical allusions, geomantic thought, and oblique references to contemporary sociopolitical strife; such is the mystical cipher for which Jorgensen wishes to provide the key.

Jorgensen has translated thirty-two texts of the corpus. He elected not to reveal their original titles, so the reader must do some research to learn which texts have been included and which have not.Footnote ¹ Other Korean translations include as many as forty texts.Footnote ² Some are structured as narratives or dialogues, while many others are in the form of opaque chronicles comprised of entries such as “Mu-sul and ki-hae: a cicada shell will enter the palace; mountain birds will appear in the courtyard” or “The dogs will bark in that year and the sparrows will leave cake crumbs” (pp. 235, 243). Texts such as these defy facile summary and indeed are largely incomprehensible, leading one to question the wisdom of attempting a translation at all. It is this illegibility, present even in the source languages, that poses the core problem for any translation.

The annotations to the translation, consisting of 1,263 endnotes, suggest, however, that Jorgensen has gone a very long way toward rendering the Chŏng Kam nok corpus legible to an Anglophone readership. The notes are not only indispensable to understanding intentionally cryptic texts; they constitute an artefact of erudition. Through these annotations, Jorgensen takes the reader through the complexities of the Yijing, the workings of the cosmos classically understood, and the unseen dynamics of earth, wind, and water as comprehended and made manageable through geomancy, or fengshui/p'ungsu. His explorations of glyphomancy (p'aja 破字), a divination form based on the component parts of written characters, are especially interesting and absolutely essential to grasping the texts. To read through the annotations is akin to a course in the reading of prophecy. Aside from the translations themselves, this is perhaps the greatest contribution this work makes to the field.

Jorgensen begins the book with an introduction of more than two hundred pages in length—nearly twice as long as the translation itself—wherein he traces the development of prognostication and geomantic thought in East Asia, with an eventual emphasis on the political role these divination practices have played historically in Korea in general and during the Chosŏn era in particular. While this exercise is enormously informative, it lacks the cohesiveness that a more robust argumentation would bring. Much of the introduction is a listing of instances in which prophetic texts functioned to legitimize insurrection, with very little analysis or even introductory or concluding paragraphs that might remind the reader why he or she is plowing through so many brief and disconnected case studies. Jorgensen suggests, as have others,Footnote ³ that one might be able to hear the voices of the oppressed in the Chŏng Kam nok corpus, as if it were a space in which, at long last, the subaltern finally speaks. This is a deeply intriguing argument, but in his recounting of references to insurrectionary prophetic texts in the records of the Chosŏn royal court, Jorgensen seems to have difficulty moving beyond prognostication as propaganda; the silenced remain inaudible.

Only in the final fifteen pages of the introduction does Jorgensen focus on the Chŏng Kam nok corpus. Here he describes its reproduction, circulation, and consumption in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. After annexation in 1910, Japanese colonial authorities, much like their Korean predecessors, found the still widely circulating prophetic texts seditious and thereby devoted resources to both study and suppress them. It was through this colonial production of knowledge about the colonized that the collection of texts here deemed the Chŏng Kam nok corpus came into being. Jorgensen does not interrogate the colonial origins of the texts he has translated, but one might well wonder how interpretations of this corpus might change with greater awareness of this colonialist intent to study what was considered a dangerously irrational indigeneity. Such concerns offer an important direction for future research.Footnote ⁴

Some smaller technical irritants also detract from the text, however marginally. The absence of a character glossary, for example, often makes it difficult to understand Chinese and Korean terms and titles as they are introduced. This problem is exacerbated by Romanization errors, even with the main source text's compiler, whose name is sometimes correctly rendered as An Ch'un'gŭn and at other times incorrectly as An Chun'gŭn. The bibliography is also awkward to use, as the different source texts are not listed among the primary sources but are instead entered as secondary sources under the names of their respective editors and translators. The result, oddly, is that even “Chŏng Kam nok” does not appear among the primary sources. There are also instances of incomplete entries and non-functioning links for some of the cited online sources, which complicate the process of finding Jorgensen's source materials.

These issues, however, do not diminish the fact that Jorgensen has not only ably translated a very difficult text but has also provided something of a manual for those who may wish to study the Chŏng Kam nok corpus and other similar literatures. His translation and heroic annotations will be enormously helpful to anyone who seeks to understand and contextualize these texts. The extensive accounting of references to prophetic writings in the Chosŏn royal court records may also serve as a reference source and even a starting point for further research into these cases. In sum, The Foresight of Dark Knowing is an ambitious and pioneering work that, to my knowledge, has no equal in the English language.