Joseon Korea Casts Movable Type

1403

King Taejong's metalworkers poured bronze into clay molds and produced hundreds of thousands of reusable characters, a half-century before Gutenberg's press. The foundry at Gyeyangso turned out Confucian classics in editions faster and cleaner than any scribe. The state, not the market, drove the innovation. Though Korean printing never achieved European-scale distribution, its metallurgical sophistication was unmatched anywhere in the world.