History

The oldest known Korean surviving printed document is a Buddhist scripture, which dates to 751 ^* The oldest surviving book printed using the more sophisticated block printing, the Chinese Diamond Sutra (a Buddhist scripture), dates from 868. The movable type printer was first invented by Bi Sheng in 1041 during Song Dynasty China. In a memorial to the throne in 1023, Northern Song Dynasty China, it recorded that the central government at that time used copperplate to print the paper money also the movable copper-block to print the numbers and characters on the money, nowadays we can find these shadows from the Song paper money. Later in the Jin Dynasty, people used the same but more developed technique to print paper money and formal official documents, the typical example of this kind of movable copper-block printing is a printed "check" of Jin Dynasty in the year of 1215. The world's first movable type metal printing press was invented in Korea in 1234 by Chwe Yun-ui during the Goryeo Dynasty. By the 12th and 13th century many Chinese libraries contained tens of thousands of printed books. The oldest extant movable metal-type book is the Jikji, printed in 1377 in Korea.