Korean Job Discussion Forums

nautilus · Joined: 26 Nov 2005 Location: Je jump, Tu jump, oui jump!

Does anyone know about this?
I was chatting to my supervisor who mentioned that Koreas oldest book was stolen by France. According to her, the Japnese looted this precious book from korea and gave it to the French, who now keep it in one of their museums and won't give it back.
She also claims koreans invented the worlds first printing press and this book proves it.
So I managed to find this:

http://prkorea.com/english/e_truth/e_truth5_2.htm

Does she have a case?

CheeseSandwich · Joined: 02 Nov 2006

Yes they invented it right after they invented the MP3.

jvalmer · Joined: 06 Jun 2003

I think it's a set of books. Supposedly, the French are "loaning" half the collection to Korea to be put on display. I'm not sure of the details. If Korea is smart, they'd just "delay" returning the books.

bluelake · Joined: 01 Dec 2005

Back in 1866, France sent a naval squadron to Korea as a punitive measure for a group of Catholic priests being executed. They battled with Korean forces here and there, but really accomplished nothing. Before they left, they took archives that were stored on Kanghwa Island. Korea has been trying to get them returned for years with no success. However, with my successful bid to get a historical flag returned to Korea this past fall from the US (on a long-term "loan"), the Cultural Heritage Administration was going to try the same thing with the archives from France.

nautilus · Joined: 26 Nov 2005 Location: Je jump, Tu jump, oui jump!

Do you think all foreign artifacts stored in museums around the world should be returned to the place they were originally collected?
If that happened, the British museum would have to be virtually airlifted back to Egypt.

bluelake · Joined: 01 Dec 2005

Bigfeet · Joined: 29 May 2008 Location: Grrrrr.....

This is the first I've heard of this. It could be true but it didn't have anything to do with advancing western history. What good is an invention of nothing much comes of it? The article spent most of its type mentioning what steel movable type did for the west then spent a paragraph or two mentioning that it was invented in Korea first.

This is analogous to the Vikings having discovered America hundreds of yeas before Columbus did. They had one small settlement up in New England. They disappeared soon after and nothing was ever heard of them or their discovery again. So really, what good did they do for the world? Not much.

So Gutenberg may not have been the first person to invent steel movable type. But he was a seminal figure in the chain of inventors that brought the West to where it is today.

Kikomom · Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2008 10:15 am Post subject:

Read "Gai-Jin", by James Clavell? During the US civil war, Japan was still a closed (to gai-jin) society. He may have mentioned Korea (mainland) some, I forget....but

visitorq · Joined: 11 Jan 2008

Kikomom · Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2008 2:51 pm Post subject:

Sometimes fantasy is the only thing that holds my interest, q. Certainly not dry textbooks.

Besides, I'm not the academic here. I'll save that for you teachers to handle.

Guess you'd think Michener was all made up too? Drifters and Caravans, nah... can't learn anything there. Wink

Anyways, this thread about artifacts and books reminded me of a book by Katherine Neville, The Eight. And a Johnny Depp (thanks to Adventurer's avatar) movie, The Ninth Gate.

Kiarell · Joined: 29 Mar 2008

The Chinese made the first printing press and some centuries later Korea invented the first printing press with movable type. It's quite possible that Gutenberg independently developed the same technology on his own. Charles Babbage designed a mechanical computer that was never built and only rediscovered after IBM (?) had developed an electro-mechanical computer.

poet13 · Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2008 5:10 pm Post subject:

I love how they used giant thumb tacks (yes, you can see how it is stretched.) to hold it in place on that sloping display. Rolling Eyes

bluelake · Joined: 01 Dec 2005

ernie · Joined: 05 Aug 2006 Location: asdfghjk

i can't fathom how the chinese managed to invent moveable type but not a PHONETIC alphabet! i can imagine them thinking: "jeez, instead of having sets of 20 000 metal characters, wouldn't it be easier to represent the SOUNDS instead?" what if a character repeats itself a number of times on the same page? imagine having multiple copies of 20 000 tile sets!

moveable type without phonetic characters is like inventing the automobile without wheels...

jvalmer · Joined: 06 Jun 2003