The World / Korean Prophetic Tradition (Jeonggamnok)
Korean Prophetic Tradition (Jeonggamnok)
The end as dynastic script: the Jeonggamnok, a secret prophecy circulating from the 17th century, schedules the collapse of the Yi dynasty, the moral deformities of the end-times, the ten refuges of salvation, and the rise of the Jeong king — apocalypse as political program, banned and believed for four centuries.
Korean prophecy is the archive's clearest warning about what apocalypse does in politics: a banned book, a promised king, a geography of salvation, and generations of new religions built on the same schedule. See the myth entry for the Jeonggamnok itself.
Key texts
- Jeonggamnok (鄭鑑錄, earliest surviving versions 17th–19th c.)
- Korea Journal 65.4 (2025), 'The Landscape of Last Days Foretold by Religions'
- J. Grayson, Korea — A Religious History (rev. ed.), dynasty-prophecy literature
Key figures
the Jeong king · the end-time human · the founders of new religions
The end, in order
- 01The dynastic cycle runs through its houses: Yi, then Jo, then Beom — each weaker and more corrupt
- 02Morality collapses: half-human half-beast figures appear, fathers and sons kill each other, ruler and subject invert
- 03After all the cycles end, the end-time human appears
- 04The faithful seek the ten places of refuge (십승지) — salvation geography across the peninsula
- 05The Jeong king of true virtue rises; the mandate changes hands; the world is renewed
What survives
The people who reach the ten refuges — a saved remnant chosen by place as much as by virtue.