How it began
In July 1377, in the third year of King U of the Goryeo dynasty, a Buddhist text commonly called Jikji was printed with movable metal type at Heungdeok Temple outside Cheongju. The fact is recorded in a postscript on the last page of the book, which states that it was printed using metal types. A record indicates that Seoksan and Daldam, students of the monk Baegun who compiled the text, helped publish it, and that the priestess Myodeok also contributed.
How it works
The technique is called juja, cast metal type. Each character was cast as a separate piece of metal, and the UNESCO nomination describes the Jikji type as beeswax-cast. The pieces were set together to print a page and could then be reused for other pages. Although Jikji was made with movable type, its printing methods differed from those later used by Johannes Gutenberg in Europe.
How it spread
Only the second volume of the metal type edition survives. It is kept in the Oriental manuscripts division of the National Library of France, with its first page missing. The book became known internationally in 1901, when the French scholar Maurice Courant listed it in the appendix of his Bibliographie coreenne. A note in French on its cover calls it the oldest known Korean book printed with molded type, dated 1377.
What lasted
Jikji was placed on public display for the first time during International Book Year in 1972, when it was recognized as the oldest existing book printed with movable metal type. An international symposium on the printing cultures of East and West was held in Cheongju in 1997 to secure wider recognition of that status. UNESCO confirmed Jikji as the oldest extant book printed with movable metal type and inscribed it on the Memory of the World Register in September 2001. The surviving volume remains in Paris.
