Jikji (1377): The Oldest Book Printed With Metal Movable Type

Jikji is the shortened name of a Korean Buddhist text whose second volume, printed at Heungdeoksa Temple near Cheongju in 1377, is the oldest surviving book printed with movable metal type. It was produced under the Goryeo dynasty some 78 years before Johannes Gutenberg printed his famous Bible in Mainz. The only known copy is now in Paris, and it stands as a landmark in the global history of printing.

What the Jikji is

The full title is Baegun hwasang chorok buljo jikji simche yojeol, which can be translated as “Anthology of the Great Buddhist Priests’ Seon Teachings, Selected by the Monk Baegun”. Seon is the Korean form of the meditative school known in China as Chan and in Japan as Zen. The book gathers sayings, poems and letters of earlier Buddhist masters from India, China and Korea, chosen to help students understand the essence of Seon practice.

The compiler, Baegun (also known by his ordination name Gyeonghan, 1298–1374), was a leading Seon monk of late Goryeo who had studied in Yuan China. He assembled the anthology around 1372, two years before his death. The title phrase jikji simche refers to the idea that a person who looks directly into their own mind will recognise the nature of the Buddha.

The text was printed in two volumes. Only the second volume survives, and it is incomplete: 38 leaves remain, with the first leaf missing. Each leaf is printed in Chinese characters, the written language of learning in medieval Korea.

Background: printing in Goryeo Korea

Korea had a long and sophisticated printing tradition before Jikji. Like China, it printed mainly from carved wooden blocks. The most famous example is the Tripitaka Koreana, a complete Buddhist canon carved on more than 81,000 woodblocks between 1237 and 1248, partly as a prayer for protection during the Mongol invasions. These blocks are still kept at Haeinsa Temple.

Movable type was not a Korean invention. In China, the craftsman Bi Sheng had made movable type of baked clay in the 1040s, as the scholar Shen Kuo recorded (see Bi Sheng and the invention of movable type printing). Wooden type was also used in China. What Goryeo artisans did was develop printing with type cast from metal, usually a bronze alloy, using techniques related to the casting of coins and temple bells.

Written sources show that Goryeo printers were using metal type well before 1377. The scholar Yi Gyu-bo recorded that a ritual text, Sangjeong gogeum yemun, was printed in 28 copies with cast type, probably around 1234. A woodblock edition of a Buddhist song text from 1239 also states that it reproduced an earlier metal-type printing. No copies of these earlier metal-type books are known to survive, which is why Jikji holds its special place.

How and when Jikji was printed

The book’s colophon, the printer’s note at the end, gives unusually precise information. It states that the text was printed with cast type at Heungdeoksa, a temple outside Cheongju, in the seventh month of the seventh year of Xuanguang. Xuanguang was the reign name of the Northern Yuan court, which Goryeo still used for dating at the time; its seventh year corresponds to 1377. The seventh lunar month fell in roughly July and August.

The colophon also names the people involved. Baegun’s disciples, the monks Seokchan and Dalcham, oversaw the printing, and a Buddhist nun named Myodeok provided funding. A woodblock edition of the same text was produced the following year, 1378, at Chwiamsa Temple, which shows that the anthology was valued and copied.

The printing itself is not perfectly regular. Characters vary in size and alignment, some appear slightly tilted, and the ink is uneven in places. Specialists see these features as evidence of a temple workshop with modest resources rather than a royal printing office. They also confirm that the pages were printed from individual pieces of type arranged in a frame, not from a single carved block.

From Korea to Paris

The surviving volume left Korea in the late 19th century. Victor Collin de Plancy, who served as the first French diplomatic representative in Seoul from 1888 and again in the 1890s, collected old Korean books. He acquired the second volume of Jikji, and it was displayed in the Korean section of the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900.

In 1911 Collin de Plancy’s collection was sold at auction in Paris. The jeweller and art collector Henri Vever bought Jikji for a modest sum. After Vever’s death in 1942, his heirs passed it to the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) in accordance with his wishes, and the library registered it in 1950.

For two decades few people recognised its importance. Park Byeong-seon, a Korean historian working at the BnF, studied the volume, and in 1972 it was shown in a Paris exhibition marking the International Book Year. The display confirmed to scholars worldwide that the book was the oldest surviving example of metal movable-type printing.

Key people

• Baegun (Gyeonghan) (1298–1374): Seon master who compiled the anthology.
• Seokchan and Dalcham: Baegun’s disciples, named in the colophon as the organisers of the printing.
• Myodeok: a Buddhist nun who sponsored the printing.
• Victor Collin de Plancy (1853–1922): French diplomat who acquired the book in Korea.
• Park Byeong-seon: historian who identified its significance at the BnF.

Recognition and legacy

In September 2001 UNESCO added the surviving volume of Jikji to its Memory of the World Register. In 2004 UNESCO also created the Jikji Memory of the World Prize, funded by South Korea, to reward work on preserving documentary heritage.

In Korea, the site of Heungdeoksa was identified in 1985, when excavations at Cheongju found a bronze temple bowl inscribed with the temple’s name. The Cheongju Early Printing Museum opened beside the site in 1992. The city now presents itself as the birthplace of metal-type printing and holds regular festivals about Jikji.

Metal type continued to develop in Korea. Under the Joseon dynasty, which replaced Goryeo in 1392, a royal type foundry was set up in 1403, and successive fonts were cast throughout the 15th century. Unlike in Europe, however, Korean metal type did not spark a mass market in books. Printing remained largely in the hands of the state and temples, and the large number of Chinese characters made type-setting slow.

The question of ownership remains sensitive. Many South Koreans want the book returned, while the BnF holds that it entered the collection legally. In 2023 the library displayed Jikji in its exhibition on Gutenberg’s Europe, the first public showing in Paris for about 50 years.

Myths and facts

• Myth: Jikji is the oldest printed book in the world. Fact: it is the oldest surviving book printed with movable metal type. Woodblock-printed books are far older; the Chinese Diamond Sutra found at Dunhuang is dated 868.
• Myth: Gutenberg copied Korean printing. Fact: there is no documentary evidence of any link. Historians generally treat the European and Korean developments as independent, and Gutenberg’s system of type moulds, oil-based ink and a press was distinctive (see Gutenberg’s printing press).
• Myth: the whole book survives. Fact: only the second of two volumes is known, and its first leaf is missing.

Timeline

• c. 1234: Goryeo records describe a ritual text printed with cast metal type; no copy survives.
• 1237–1248: carving of the Tripitaka Koreana woodblocks.
• c. 1372: the monk Baegun compiles the anthology.
• 1377, seventh lunar month: Jikji is printed with metal type at Heungdeoksa Temple near Cheongju.
• 1378: a woodblock edition is printed at Chwiamsa Temple.
• 1900: the volume is displayed at the Paris Exposition Universelle.
• 1911: Henri Vever buys it at auction in Paris.
• 1950: the book is registered in the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
• 1972: it is exhibited in Paris and recognised internationally.
• 2001, September: inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.

Why it matters

Jikji is concrete proof that printing with movable metal type was practised in Korea in the 14th century, generations before it appeared in Europe. It reminds readers that the history of the book has several centres, and that a small temple workshop in Goryeo played a real part in one of humanity’s most important technologies.