A 15th century lesson

By John Burton

In the early 15th century, Korea possessed one of the most revolutionary technologies of its day: printing with moveable type. Although invented in China, Korea was the world's leader in the application of the technology as early as the 13th century.

Printing with moveable type was revolutionary since it could produce texts in a more uniform manner than traditional calligraphy. But both China and Korea faced one big handicap in adopting the technology. Their use of Chinese characters as a writing system meant that it was still time-consuming and labor-intensive to produce books since it involved thousands of different characters. The only reason why Korea leaped ahead of China in printing was that Korea normally used fewer Chinese characters in its scripts.

But in the 1440s, Korea came up with a killer application to overcome this problem: the invention of ''Hangeul'' under the sponsorship of King Sejong. The simple Hangeul alphabet was perfect for mass printing by eliminating the complexity of Chinese characters. Korea appeared to be on the verge of becoming the global leader in the printing revolution, the most significant development in human communications until the Internet.

As we all know, that didn't happen. It was Johann Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany who perfected the invention of printing with moveable type at the same time that Korea was developing Hangeul and this breakthrough would accelerate the rise of Western culture.

The interesting question then is why Korea lost out to Europe in the printing revolution. The answers bear on the challenges that Korea faces today.

Some of the reasons were purely technical. The paper that Korea used, designed for calligraphy and block printing, was less suitable for printing than the European variety. Moreover, Korea lacked the means to dry its paper efficiently since it did not possess the screw-based presses that Europeans originally developed for wine production but later applied to the printing process.

A much more important reason why Korea failed to embrace the printing revolution was that the use of Hangeul, the key to mass printing, was opposed by the vested interests of the neo-Confucian scholar class.

This is ironic since one of the main reasons why King Sejong wanted to promote the development of a simple alphabet for the common people was to promote neo-Confucianism that the Joseon Kingdom had adopted as its ideology when it come to power in 1392 in an effort to establish its authority and oppose Buddhism.

Printing books in Hangeul was seen as a way of disseminating tales of dutiful children who sacrificed themselves for their parents or wives for their husbands in what amounted to a propaganda campaign for neo-Confucian values.

So why did most of the scholar class oppose Hangeul? One reason was that it represented a potential threat to their elite status signified by the use of Chinese characters. There were also worries that the adoption of Hangeul would lead to possible estrangement from China and the vulgarization of the classics. While King Sejong called his alphabet ''jeongum'' (proper sounds), it was soon saddled with the derogatory name of '''oenmun'' (vulgar script).

The elite realized that printing in Hangeul could prove to be a double-edged sword. While printing in Hangeul was initially meant to promote social control through neo-Confucian propaganda, the scholar elite also realized that it was dangerous to put a tool as politically powerful as writing in the hands of the common people.

This was precisely what happened in Europe. Gutenberg developed his printing process to publish a uniform text of the Bible in the belief that its wide distribution would help unite Christendom. But his invention soon shattered it instead as Martin Luther exploited printing to challenge the Catholic Church, leading to the Reformation and the religious wars that convulsed Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries.

There was another key difference between Europe and Korea when it came to printing. Gutenberg's project was privately financed by what we would now call venture capitalists and the rapid growth of printing throughout Europe thereafter relied on funding from the private sector as well.

In contrast, the printing of books in Hangeul relied completely on state financing since there was no system of private capital. As a result, the widespread adoption of printing was handicapped in Korea because of the opposition from scholar-officials to Hangeul, despite being championed by King Sejong.

Printing in the 15th century was what would now be called a disruptive technology. Europe was able to embrace it because of a decentralized system of private sector financing, although the downside was that it resulted in political upheaval. In Korea, a conservative and centralized bureaucracy opposed mass printing using Hangeul, resulting in a loss of global leadership in one of the world's most important technologies.

Korea's history might have been quite different if it had followed Europe's example 500 years ago. It was only with the full adoption of Hangeul after World War II that Korea was able to achieve economic prosperity due to the arrival of universal literacy.

John Burton, a former Korea correspondent for the Financial Times, is now a Seoul-based independent journalist and media consultant. He can be reached at john. burton@insightcomms.com.