NOTE: This page is now included in the main Unforgotten Sisters investigation page as it is central to the argument made there. While this page will stay up, any updates will be made on the main page and not here.
Using the Cosmos Magazine article for comparison.
Quotes from Sheri Holman's Sŏndŏk: Princess of the Moon and Stars are from the version on Internet Archive.
| Cosmos Mag article | Princess of the Moon and Stars |
|---|---|
| Will I ever know the truth about the stars? I’m too young to engage in theories about our Universe. I just know that I want to understand more. I want to know all I can. Why should it be forbidden? | Will we ever know the truth about the stars? I am too young to venture a theory about our universe, I only know that I want to understand more deeply. I want to know all I can know. Why should it be forbidden? (p. 77) |
| This sentence, found on a votive jar dedicated to her grandmother, had been written by a young girl, a Korean princess of the Silla Dynasty, when she was 15 years old. | [The princess, writing to her grandmother:] I have been thinking over my duties as a keeper of the Ancestor Jar, and I hope you will not grow angry with me if I slip in some of my own private thoughts. (p. 4) |
| she was very interested in astronomy in an era where no education was granted to women. | This is what I love most about studying astronomy, Grandmother. It is not just a science of planets and stars. It is a science about their marvelously complex relationships to one another. (pp. 5-6) |
| At seven, for example, a box of peony seeds arrived at the Court, from China. | “When [the princess] was but seven years old, the Emperor of China sent me a packet of peony seeds.” (p. 65) |
| her tutor, the Chinese ambassador Lin Fang, who was also an astronomer. | Word has reached me that the ambassador from China has arrived with the new official calendar. I've heard he is a great lover of astronomy and I hope to learn much from him during his stay. (pp. 4-5) Father has sent word that I may meet Lord Lin Fang (as I have learned the ambassador is called) when our court astronomers present our calendar tomorrow. (p. 11) Father has engaged Lin Fang as our tutor! (p. 50) |
| Sonduk, however, used to make observations every night and was mostly self-taught. | All night I measure the stars to understand their meaning for our kingdom. (p. 57) |
| Convinced of the necessity of a strictly domestic occupation for females, [Lin Fang] replied: “Surely you can’t think I can have a conversation on such important topics with a young woman! It would be unnatural and totally inappropriate.” | “I am happy to advise your father's astronomers, and you may tell them so, Lady Sŏndŏk,” Lord Lin Fang said frigidly. “But surely you cannot imagine I would converse on such a serious subject with a young lady? It would be unnatural, and wholly against the laws of propriety.” (p. 19) |
| during a solar eclipse that occurred in Korea, the young princess was able to predict the event and its duration with high accuracy | “It is mathematically impossible to have an eclipse in the tenth month of this year.” (p. 46) All week, people had been whispering that I could foretell the future because I correctly predicted that there would be no eclipse. (p. 154) |
| This angered the ambassador even more. He gave her another bit of advice: “Astronomy is not for women,” he said. “Do anything feminine, such as care of silkworms!” | When I appeared before Lin Fang for my lessons today, he dismissed me, saying, “The silkworms have need of you. Confucius would never want to stand in the way of a woman's duty to her worms.” (p. 69) |
| Eventually, this influential diplomat from a powerful neighbouring country managed to convince Sonduk’s father to preclude the princess from any further study of the stars. | “I tried to tell the Lady Sŏndŏk that astronomy is a difficult science,” Lord Lin Fang suddenly interjected, and his voice was thick and icy like the weather outside. “It should not be entrusted to a woman.” “Sŏndŏk fancies herself an astronomer,” said Father, casting an annoyed look my way. “She is a clever girl, but sometimes she oversteps her place.” (p. 47) |
| Sonduk had begged her father for several years to set out on [Cheomseongdae's] building, but eventually accomplished the challenge on her own. | It is my greatest desire to one day build an observatory here dedicated only to mapping the sky. I have hinted to Father that is what I want for my New Year's gift. (p. 9) “It is not an observatory,” he said, as I unwrapped a small red package. Inside was a lovely golden bracelet … I smiled weakly, trying to hide my disappointment … (p. 43) Every year I ask for the same thing–an observatory of my very own, and every year my Father pats my head like a child. (p. 44) |