I hate to be the one to bring it up, but a lot of the history of "Sul Sa Do" is completely fictitious before the late 1980s, when it split from disenfranchised members of the KSW and HRD communities.
As a result, you're right to enquire about the authentic history.
There actually isn't a heck of a lot of good information on Korean swordsmanship. The Koreans did develop some indigenous swords, but these were mostly for ceremonial purposes.
It's also interesting to note that the martial culture of Korea is a small percentage of what you'd find in Japan or China--the Korean peninsula maintained a fairly smooth international peace and tight internal controls that maintained a status quo (think "Hermit Kingdom"!) that kept them out of large scale war efforts. There wasn't a whole lot of reason for swords in Korean history.
During Korea's history, there were a few military issues: a naval battle, which was of course fought with ships and not so much swords, and a Mongolian invasion which was repelled with Korea's best weaponcraft: archery.
That said, the earliest swords that were used were very much influenced by the Chinese jin swords (the Korean word gum, meaning "sword," comes from this specific Chinese word): long, single-hand, and straight bladed designed for thrusting and cutting. The genuine Korean swords that have been found look a lot like Chinese jin, but with less ornamentation (the Confucian influence being present even there: less showy is better).
As Japan rose to prominence, many Korean metal workers went to Japan to make cheap copies of Japanese swords; as is often the case, the Korean workmanship quickly rose in quality and availability, and the Korean smiths in Japan were often sought after for their excellent material. I don't buy into the Korean claims that they were responsible for the development and quality of the katana--I think that rightly stays with the Japanese, but there's no doubt that Koreans produced stunning material in Japan.
But back in Korea, it's a bit of another story. The curved design of the Japanese katana didn't make its way back to Korea until the Japanese brought it there in 1910! Modern "Korean" swords you see today that look like Japanese swords are simply recent designs.
In 1945-1955, the new South Korean government was in a real need to establish its credibility...a national identity crisis, having been virtually imprisoned by the Japanese for half a century, and having been self-imprisoned for thousands of years prior. As a result, the government did itself a disservice by wildly exaggerating or even fabricating a lot of its history to provide more local color. The "ancient warriors" lie rose up to counter the samurai mythos of the recently-defeated Japanese... and this spread to every Korean martial art (that is, Japanese derived martial art) and fueled a lot of this "1800 year old" stuff. The fact is that there is little martial culture native to Korea. Don't get me wrong: tough, strong people who endured a lot. But they had no warrior culture because it would directly contradict Confucian ideals set in place for thousands of years there.
The 1980s saw a boom in Korean martial arts popularity here in the States, and that led to a number of rifts in the KMAs, with people opting to create numerous sub-styles "all descended from the warriors from 1800 years ago." There are a couple of sword-oriented systems, but they're either derivatives of Kendo (like Kumdo), or they're syntheses of other systems' techniques (like Hwarangdo or KukSoolWon).
This relative absence of the sword throughout Korean history explains why Korean sword arts spend very little time on the history and development of Korean blades, and why there aren't 600 Korean words for every small part of a sword... the material isn't very rich.
But if you compare that to a Korean weapon that was used--it's a different story. A traditional Korean archery student will spend hours discussing just the parts of a bow and how each was developed, etc., because there's thousands of years of solid stuff there.
