Korean Empire Aegukga - Lyrics (Original Version)

Lyrics (Original Version)

The original lyrics were re-discovered on 13 August 2004, by curator Lee Dong-guk of the Seoul Calligraphy Art Museum. The surviving specimen was a copy kept by the Korean-American Club of Honolulu-Wahiawa and published in 1910 under the title Korean old national hymn in English and 죠션국가 in Korean.

The discovery came as a surprise even in South Korea, where the existence of the original lyrics was unknown until then. The finding was later reported in the mass media and has since then been performed by various K-pop artists. Hawaii has been a source for various pre-Japanese annexation heritage investigations by South Korea since many Korean Empire citizens emigrated to Hawaii before the Japanese annexation. One recent incident involved a Korean Empire émigré descendant donating a very rare 100-plus-year-old original passport issued by the Korean Empire to South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun during his visit to Hawaii.

The original lyrics are:

In the romanisation, ‹:› indicates length marks for singing that appear in the source; ˉ marks vowels that would have been pronounced as long vowels when not singing. While the copy appearing in the source used for this article appears markedly newer than the 1900s and calls the anthem “Joseon national anthem” (죠션 국가) instead of “Patriotic song of the Korean Empire” (大韓帝國愛國歌) as one would expect from a 1900s copy, it clearly shows pre-1933 orthography (reproduced in this article) that was not used after the 1940s.