Now that we have learned about the scripts used in Korea, let us learn about Korean education and literacy using them. We consider the two topics from a historical perspective, as we did in Part I on Chinese and will do again in Part III on Japanese. The history of education and literacy not only is interesting in its own right but also delineates factors other than scriptspolitical, economic, and educational policiesthat affect the spread of literacy (based on Lee Ki-baik 1984; Nahm 1990).
For hundreds of years, until the early 19th century, education in Korea meant teaching the Confucian classics to a small privileged group of men who prepared for the civil service examinations. In the late 19th and the early 20th centuries, Korea attempted, without much success, to modernize education. Only some years after the liberation of Korea from Japanese rule in 1945, did both South and North Korea achieve the kind of truly universal and modern education that produces mass literacy.
As in Part I, we gauge the literacy level of a nation indirectly through books and magazines printed and published. Korea has a long and venerable tradition of printing and publishing. In particular it can boast the world's first serious use of movable metal type in printing.
During the Koryoe kingdom (9181392) woodblock printing flourished, and many kinds of books were published. There were libraries holding tens of thousands of books. The earliest surviving Korean history is the History of Three Kingdoms (Samguk Sagi) written by Kim Pu-sik in 1145 under the order of a Koryoe king. Its geography section records the old native place names of the three kingdoms before they were changed to Sino-Korean names in the 8th century. Another history book, Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms (Samguk Yusa) , was written by the monk Iryoen in 1280. It preserves 14 hyangga, native poems, which are valuable in showing how native words were written in Hancha. These histories record the existence of the earlier history books on the individual kingdoms of Silla, Paekche, and Koguryoe.
A mammoth collection of Buddhist scriptures, the Tripitaka (Taejangkyoeng) in 5,048 volumes, was completed between 1021 and 1087, only to be burned during the Mongol invasion in 1232. The second printing of the scripture, known as the Koryoe Tripitaka or Tripitaka Koreana, was completed between 1236 and 1251. This workin over 80,000 wood blocksis regarded as the most complete, oldest, and finest among some twenty versions of Tripitaka originating in East Asia, and is preserved in Haeinsa Temple on Mt. Kaya in S. Korea as one of the world's cultural treasures. In 1236 Korea's oldest surviving medical treatise, Emergency Remedies of Folk Medicine, appeared.
Woodblock printing has many advantages, especially when one needs to print many copies of one particular book, in repeated editions ("Invention of Paper and Printing" in chap. 10). But when one needs to print a small number of copies of many kinds of works, printing by movable type is more efficient than by woodblock. In Koryoe the normal run of an edition tended to be small, as books were for a small group of educated upper-class readers. So Koryoe printers were interested in developing movable type. There is a record of the use of cast metal type in 1234 to print the 50-volume Prescribed Texts for Rites of the Past and Present, but no copies remain today. One extant Buddhist scripture, now kept in the library of Koryoe University, is believed to have been printed in 1297. Another Buddhist scripture printed in 1377 is preserved in the National Library of Paris. In 1392, the last year of the Koryoe kingdom, a national office for book publication was set up for casting type and printing books.
The use of cast metal movable type in Koryoe in 1234 preceded by some 200 years the first use of it in Germany by Johann Gutenberg in the mid-15th century. Movable type had been invented in China in the 11th century, but it never really caught on there, where the type blocks were at first fashioned in clay or engraved on wood. Cast bronze type appeared in China only in the late 17th century or early 18th century. Cast type is essential if the characters are to be the same on each occurrence.
In 1403 the Chosoen kingdom established a national metal printing press, improving its movable type sets four times, and printed the Confucian classics and historical literature. In the mid-15th century during King Sejong's reign, two important documents were published: Hunmin Choeng'uem (Correct Sounds to Instruct People ) and Explanations and Examples of Hunmin Choeng'uem (see "Creation and Adoption of Han'gul" in chap. 13). They were originally written in Hancha, and the Hancha texts were translated into Han'gul. To demonstrate the efficacy of Han'gul, King Sejong established the Office for Publication and had it publish a number of major works that contained both Hancha and Han'gul. Here are a few of the important early works:
In the late 15th century King Sejong's son, King Sejo, had numerous Buddhist texts translated into Han'gul with some Hancha. One queen translated into Han'gul a few books on moral education for women. Agricultural manuals for peasants, and military texts whose contents were to be kept secret from foreigners, were written in Han'gul. In 1527 Ch'oe Se-jin wrote Explanations of Characters (Hunmong Chahoe) , using Han'gul to explain 3,360 common Hancha, thus teaching Han'gul in the process of teaching Hancha. The book competed with the Thousand-Character Essay (chap. 9) as a popular textbook of Hancha for children.
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