This study analyzed food poisoning articles in the Joseonwangjosillok to acquire historical evidence. The study method used case studies from the textual content of the Joseonwangjosillok. In all, there were fifteen cases of food poisoning in spring (60%), four cases in summer (16%), five cases in fall (20%), and 1 case during winter (4%). Most cases of food poisoning occurred during spring, followed by fall, then summer, and the least during winter. Foods that caused poisoning were as follows: twelve cases of seafood (48%), three cases of vegetables (12%), two cases of meat (8%), and eight cases of poisonous food (32%). Maximum cases pertained to seafood poisoning, which also spiked during spring. This could be attributed to the increased number of planktons as the sea temperature rose during spring. Due to the increased plankton, shellfish absorbed more toxins. The consumption of increasingly toxic shellfish resulted in more cases of food poisoning. The food poisoning frequency was the most severe during the 18th century, followed sequentially by the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, and was the least severe during the 19th century. Joseonwangjosillok showed that food poisoning cases happened most during social events where many guests or family members gathered to eat.

This study used the big data method to analyze the chronological frequency of seafood appearance and variety mentioned by the veritable records of the Joseon dynasty. The findings will be used as a basis for Joseon Period’s food cultural research. The web-crawling method was used to digitally scrap from the veritable records of the Joseon dynasty of Joseon’s first to the twenty-seventh king. A total of 9,536 cases indicated the appearance of seafood out of the 384,582 articles. Seafood were termed ‘‘seafood” as a collective noun 107 times (1.12%), 27 types of fish 8,372 times (87.79%), 3 types of mollusca (1.28%), 18 types of shellfish 213 times (2.23%), 6 types of crustacean 188 times (1.97%), 9 types of seaweed 534 times (5.60%). Fish appeared most frequently out of all the recorded seafood. Sea fish appeared more frequently than the freshwater fish. Kings that showed the most Strong Interest Inventory (SII) were: Sungjong from the 15thcentury, Sehjo from the 15th, Youngjo from the 18th, Sehjong from the 15th, and Jungjo from the 18th respectively. Kings of Chosen were most interested in seafood in the 15th and 18th centuries.