An epiphany about metal movable type — literacy and civilized government

I’ve had an epiphany. This one is about Korean printing technology. The basic question is: Why, if the Gutenberg press spawned the Renaissance and then the Enlightenment and the end of feudalism in Europe, did not the same thing happen in Korea 200 years ahead of Gutenberg when Korea developed its own metal movable type?

Korea likes to display its pride over developing metal movable type printing and book distribution, but where were the consequential developments like those in Europe? The answer is — and this is my epiphany — the printing revolution and its attending developments were already happening in Korea ahead of metal movable type. The revolution is Korea had started with wood block printing. Metal movable type was one step in an ongoing renaissance.

It was wood block printing that created the renaissance in Korea, not 200 years ahead of Gutenberg, but 400 or 500 years ahead. It was on the heels of wood block printing, whereby large numbers of books could be printed and shared with schools all across the country. Korea was mass-producing books while Europe was still copying books by hand.

European schools and monasteries slowly spread religious scholarship, the only kind of scholarship there was, through reading of hand-copied manuscripts — manos = hand, script = writing.

Korea had some wood block printing as early as the mid-eighth century, but the exa les we know were of prayer scrolls, not any of the classic texts. But eventually, the wood block technology spread to e printing of the Confucian classics and the Buddhist scriptures. Like the West, early texts were all religious in nature.

The key factor was the emergence of secular education aimed at providing passage of the state exams that were entry to government positions. This was an extremely important development because it marked the departure from feudalism and the growth of a civilian-controlled, centralized government. No longer were political entities located in regional parts of the country maintained by a fighting force of knights or samurai. The elite of the country became scholars, not soldiers, those who could pass the state exam.

And like the renaissance in Europe, the renaissance in Korea was a product of studying the “classics” — in Europe, it was texts in Latin (Gutenberg did not print his Bible in German, but rather in Latin), and in Korea, it was texts in Chinese — the classics. Printing of books created the renaissance in Europe which led to wider-spread literacy, more prosperity and the death of feudalism. In Korea, the same thing happened, but hundreds of years earlier that in Europe.

Korea, by the time of the invention of movable metal type, had already blossomed into its renaissance, with its growth in literacy and education, had begun to prosper and, with the early development of a centralized state, had left feudalism behind.

It was in that atmosphere in the 13th century, that Korea started printing books with movable type. But the movable-type printing in Korea did not replace hand-copying of texts — that had already taken place by use of wood block printing about 200 years earlier. Metal movable type was merely a modified form of wood block printing. Korea didn’t need a revolutionary new technology like Gutenberg’s — it already had it.

The metal movable type developed in Korea was laid out in a wood block, basically. It was wood block printing with a new wrinkle — replaceable type fonts. This fact explains one other mystery — why Korea continued to use wood block printing after movable type printing was invented. Indeed, metal movable type was being developed at exactly the same time that Korea was creating its world-class 80,000 wood block collection for printing the entire Buddhist canon — now housed at Haein Temple near Daegu.

The massive effort to carve wood blocks for the Buddhist scripture could be used again and again, to print new books years, centuries after the first edition. Whereas movable type was reset and lost — yes, the paper copy would survive, but on the other hand, the ability to print again, and again, and again, off of the same wood blocks was of resounding importance.

In fact, in the Confucian realm, the collected essays of great scholars were ordered by the court to be printed on wood blocks so that they, too, could serve to reprint later on demand. And every shrine complex dedicated to a great scholar had a building to house the wood blocks. You can still see them at every seowon (private Confucian academy) in Korea today. To make a print run of paperback copies with movable type was seen as a temporary and short-sighted venture. Significant books were printed on wood blocks and they continued to be carved until the dawn of the 20th century.

So, why didn’t movable type create a Gutenberg-style renaissance and revolution in Korea? The answer is that Korea had already done that — “Been there, done that.” Korea had widespread education (admittedly not universal, but among the upper class), and had already left feudalism behind in favor of a civil, central government that recruited officers through a written exam — all this, centuries ahead of Europe. Movable type printing was not the start of the renaissance, but a part of the wood block revolution that had already created the Korean renaissance. That was my epiphany.

Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is a professor emeritus of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.