Joseon printing blocks up for UNESCO nod
The Cultural Heritage Administration will submit an application for the inclusion of 64, 226 woodblocks from the Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910) to the UNESCO’s Memory of the World for 2015. / Yonhap
By Chung Ah-young
The Cultural Heritage Administration (CHA) plans to propose Joseon’s wooden printing blocks for inclusion in UNESCO’s Memory of the World list for 2015.
The agency plans to submit its official application by the end of next month. The final decision will be made at a meeting of the International Advisory Committee for the Memory of the World Program to be held around June next year.
A total of 64,226 wooden blocks were manufactured to print Joseon’s prominent Confucian scholars’ writings ranging from literature, history, biography and geography to Neo-Confucianism from the late 15th century to the early 20th century.
They were donated by 305 clans based in Gyeongsang Province which was home to prominent Confucian scholars in ancient times.
The wooden blocks were made voluntarily by the descendants of Confucian scholars to print the books in order to preserve the legacy of their academic achievement for future generations.
According to the CHA, the blocks are as assets of world significance, integrity and originality, which meet the standards of the UNESCO’s Memory of the World.
“The wood blocks were made through a wide range of the periods and by different scholars living in different regions. But their writings have the common goal of exploring the ideas of morality. The content also shows the development of Confucian researches over the times,” Park Sun, a researcher of the Korean Studies Advancement Center, said.
Currently, Korea has 11 registrations on UNESCO’s Memory of the World list such as “The Hunmin Chongum Manuscript,” “The Annals of the Joseon Dynasty” and the “Tripitaka Koreana.”