[INTERVIEW] Joseon was a global leader of the print revolution

Korean Heritage

Published: 27 Feb. 2023, 18:02 Updated: 27 Feb. 2023, 19:30

[INTERVIEW] Joseon was a global leader of the print revolution

Hwang Tae-yeon, Dongguk University honorary professor of political science at his offie in Gangnam, southern Seoul, on Feb. 23. [CHOI YOUNG-JAE]

Printed in 1377, the Goryeo Jikjisimgyeong is the world's oldest document created using movable metal type, 78 years ahead of the Gutenberg Bible.

That's common knowledge to any Korean who went to school.

However, few people are aware of the countless other books Koreans printed in the distant past using movable metal type.

That’s because there has been little systematic, in-depth research on Korea's pre-modern publishing culture.

That's also why there's widespread misunderstanding that Korea's publishing culture was comparatively undeveloped vis-a-vis the West, where the Gutenberg Bible sparked a veritable revolution, despite the emergence of movable metal type in Korea decades earlier.

Dongguk University honorary professor of political science Hwang Tae-yeon argues against such a misconception.

“Joseon was truly a nation of books that succeeded in igniting a publishing revolution and popularizing knowledge roughly 400 years ahead of Western civilization,” Hwang said.

He produced a complete list of books that were published with metal types during the 500 years of the Joseon Dynasty by searching every library not only in Korea but also abroad, as well as museum catalogs and bibliography databases.

His two-volume book titled “The Publication Revolution of Joseon, a Nation of Books,” ultimately contains a list of 14,117 publication types printed during the five centuries. The list alone comprises appendix 385 pages.

The Publication Revolution of Joseon, a Nation of Books

It's the first such catalog in the 800 years since movable metal type was invented in Korea.

Hwang received his masters’ degree in international studies from Seoul National University and studied Marxism at Goethe University in Frankfurt in 1991, where he received his doctorate.

He has been studying and teaching both Eastern and Western political philosophy since he became a political science professor at Dongkuk University in 1994.

He became an honorary professor in March 2022.

The following is an excerpt from the JoongAng Sunday's interview with Hwang.

Q. What was your interest in the history of metal type and publishing, which have nothing to do with your expertise in political philosophy?

A. While I was studying Confucian philosophy's influence on the West, I stumbled upon records by Western scholars that claimed that Korean metal type had influenced the West. So, I shared my findings with relevant scholars in Korea, but nothing changed over the past 10 years. I decided to write my own book and let the truth be known.

Do you mean Korean metal type traveled to the West?

Gutenberg copied Korean metal type printing technology. There have already 14 papers published overseas on Korean metal type printing technology's move to the West.
While conducting my research, I demonstrated six land and sea routes through which Korea's metal type traveled to the West, four of which were discovered for the first time by me.
Equally as important as Korea's metal type preceding Gutenberg's is that Joseon distributed its written publications much more widely than China or Europe. The printing and publishing revolution means the popularization of knowledge as book prices significantly drop with the explosive increase in book published. Joseon was way ahead of the world in its publication revolution.

*According to Hwang, in the 60 years following the publication of Donatus's Latin grammar using Gutenberg's type, the average per-nation printing of books using movable type in 16 European nations was just one sixth that of Joseon during the same period.
While China printed overwhelmingly more books than Joseon, its per capita printing — taking into account China's popular than was 25 to 30 times larger than Joseon — was far lower. So, he claimed, China called Joseon a "land of books" from early on.

What are most of the 14,117 book types about?

Contrary to the commonly held notion that Joseon was a neo-Confucian society centered on scholarly aristocrats, only several hundred neo-Confucian texts were actually published. Instead, over 90 percent of book were industrial or technological tracts about agriculture, sericulture, fishing or medicine. From this, you can see that practical knowledge intimately tied to the lives of the common people spread vibrantly.

That would seem to disprove the claim that farmers were illiterates.

During the French expedition to Korea of 1866, a French naval officer recorded the shame he felt when he found books such as the Thousand Character Classic and the Dongmongseonseup in every farmhouse when the French invaded Ganghwa Island. He wrote that unlike the farmers in his homeland, Joseon farmers were reading books.

*Professor Hwang claimed that Joseon was the first country in the world to print newspapers. The first private commercial daily — dubbed the jobo — was first printed in Seoul on Nov. 6, 1577. The jobo was a newspaper that provided information about the royal court, including the king’s decrees and commands as well as the appointment of government officials. The jobo circulated among government officials as well as among scholarly aristocrats nationwide. It was first issued 73 years before the Einkommende Zeitungen, also known as Leipziger Zeitungen, Europe’s first commercial daily newspaper, appeared in 1650. Hwang said Joseon could have private printing presses because the country's metal type technology was so advanced and because the nation distributed so many books to the private sector.

King Seonjo reportedly sent 38 people who were involved in printing the jobo into exile.

It was said that King Seonjo was extremely angry about the government’s vital information possibly being leaked to China. The printers must have felt unfairly accused because they issued the jobo with authorization from the government. The jobo at the time was very helpful for government officials outside of the capital as it allowed them to easily learn what was happening in the central government. Although the king’s high-ranking officials repeatedly pleaded that the exiles imposed on those involved with the jobo were unjust, King Seonjo refused to listen to the very end.

If there are 14,117 types of books, but how many books were actually printed?

Since the 17th century it became common for everyone regardless of their social status to send their children to seodang [village Confucian schools]. In 1807, the seventh year of King Sunjo's reign, there were roughly 80,000 public and private seodang across the country.
If we estimate the average number of students per seodang at eight, that means roughly 640,000 students with roughly 80,000 hunjang [school headmasters] would have needed books.
Each student or hunjang needed four major titles, including the Thousand Character Classics. If so, that would constitute 2.88 million books a year.
In addition, to supply books to Sungkyunkwan [the state Confucian university] as well as to hyanggo [state-run higher-education institutions], seowon [private education institutes], Buddhist monasteries and administrative institutions, at least 4 million books had to be supplied. This indicates that Joseon could handle printing such a massive number of books every year with its revolutionary publishing capacity.

Was there a huge difference in book prices between Joseon and Europe?

In the 19th century, a cheap 30-page novel circulating in Paris exceeded one-third of a farmhand’s monthly pay. In 19th century Joseon, the philosophy book “Daxue” [Great Learning] was worth one-22nd of a farmhand’s monthly pay. “Zhongyong” [Doctrine of the Mean] was only one-15th. The mass production of a wide variety of books was possible because of the Joseon Dynasty’s metal type printing technology's letterpress printing system and beongak system.

*The beongak system is where copies of an original document published by the central government through the letterpress system is sent to regional government offices throughout the country. The copy is then dismantled and the back of each page is pasted on a wooden board. The words are then carved out accordingly to make copies. The system saved time and money, making mass production possible.

Weren’t the Europeans able to create a similar copying system?

Gutenberg's metal type was a system where each letter of the alphabet was engraved in metal. The letters were then fixed on a typeset and printed on a plate. It had the critical flaw that the typeset was impossible to reuse once it was dismantled after printing. Europeans didn’t know the beongak system that utilized woodblock printing, either. As such, they couldn't make mass productions.

Your catalog also contains 265 types of copies of books related to early Joseon linguistics. That suggests that substantial numbers of Hangeul books were printed by metal type, too.

Compared with the 277 Buddhist scriptures and 399 Neo-Confucianism tracts that were issued in the 500 years of the Joseon Dynasty, it's not a small number. Contrary to arguments by some local scholars that Hangeul played second fiddle to Chinese characters, you could see that Hangeul was actively used in the nation's governance system, including royal decrees.
King Gojong made it his first order to name Hangeul the national alphabet in 1894 and used it in all public documents. This was possible because he believed the move would pose few problems. Therefore, arguments that only women and commoners used Hangeul are wrong. If you look at the papers published during the Korean Empire, the Dongnip Sinmun, Maeil Sinmun and Kukje Sinmun were printed in Hangeul only while the Hwangseong Sinmun and Daehan Maeil Sinbo mixed Hangeul with Chinese characters. Since such esteemed publications were all in Hangeul, King Gojong could easily execute his order.

It must have been very difficult to create such a massive list.

I almost died doing it. I checked and confirmed each and every book, not only existent ones but also books that records undeniably prove were published though they no longer physically exist today. I reorganized lists that were created by scholars in other fields that they used in their own studies, and searched Google for lists of books hidden in U.S. libraries. The most difficult part was that some books have different names. The Jikjisimgyeong is also called Jikjisimcheyojeol or simply Jikji. In the case of collections of work, some had the honorific “seonsaeng” added to the title of the book. I had to check each and every one of them.

Through your book that proves Joseon was a nation of books, what message that you want to share?

Firstly, I want to correct the misconception of our history. Second, I personally wanted to find the answer to a mystery we haven't been able to solve, namely, "How are we able to live so well today?’”
The surprising secret weapon of Koreans who thrive in the world today was a collective DNA that goes back to the Joseon Dynasty, namely, of being a nation of books. In other words, it was our desire to learn and our passion for education.
Joseon was both a school and a publishing house. And metal type was the most important pillar for a country that was thusly a school and publisher.
The DNA that was formed at that time, that "to live we must learn," became the driving force behind Korea's democratization, industrialization and the K-culture now spreading worldwide. We should take pride in our history.

BY SEO JUNG-MIN [meantree@joongang.co.kr]