Jikji, and One NGO's Lonely Fight to Bring It Home

By Richard Pennington

At some point in the early 1890s, Victor Collin de Plancy, the French ambassador to Korea, added an old Buddhist-oriented book to his already sizable collection. He had no idea that Baegun hwasung chorok buljo jikji simche yojeol (“Jikji,” for short) was the oldest extant document printed on movable metal type. In the decades that followed, its value in the eyes of historians and cultural anthropologists has risen enormously—evidence most of all that the printing press derives from East Asia and not Johannes Gutenberg’s workshop in Mainz, Germany. Jikji, and One NGO’s Lonely Fight to Bring it Home—dedicated to the fearless Dr. Park Byeong-seon—traces the Jikji story from its composition by a monk named Baegun to its printing at Heungdeok Temple in Cheongju, Korea in 1377 to Collin de Plancy to its present circumstances in a lockbox at the National Library of France.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Sep 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9781684709335

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Jikji, and

One NGO’s Lonely

Fight to Bring It Home

Richard Pennington

Copyright © 2019 Richard Pennington

Cover design by Ison Ahn

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

This book is a work of non-fiction.

ISBN: 978-1-6847-0934-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6847-0933-5 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date:   09/16/2019

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Preface

Jikji, and One NGO’s Lonely Fight to Bring It Home is not an academic book. You will find no scholarly citations, footnotes or things of that sort herein. And yet I strive for accuracy no less than a doctoral student who yearns to impress his or her supervisor. Neither is it for children. I dare say some readers will find it challenging because it covers 1,100 years of history and a multiplicity of issues. I have done my best to avoid over-the-top polemics regarding the French, although their behavior starting in 1866 opens them up to a certain amount of justifiable criticism.

I am glad to have the opportunity to narrate the long, convoluted history of Jikji, the oldest extant document printed on movable metal type, and our campaign for its repatriation. While it’s true that I founded and am the driving force in the Committee to Bring Jikji Back to Korea, far too much attention has been paid to the fact that I am a foreigner. Many Koreans have confessed to feeling ashamed, insisting that one of them should have taken on this role. Don’t fret, I say. We are working together as a team for a valiant cause.

Jikji’s significance was not widely grasped until just after the turn of the 20th century. Had the ROK government consistently made this an issue in all its relations with France, Jikji might well have been returned by now. Korean citizens who care nothing about their history ("What’s Jikji? or I read about it in high school.) baffle me. Some claim they are too busy" to learn of it or get involved. Others, as you will soon see, consider the challenge too great and despair of affecting the status quo.

A great deal has been written about Jikji and the Oegyujanggak archives in the last few years, not all of it accurate. Here, I hope, information is gathered together and presented in a way that is comprehensible. When the facts are unknown or hazy, as is sometimes the case, I say so.

As for me, I am a native of Dallas, Texas in the USA and graduated from the University of Texas in 1976 with a history degree. I have been in Korea since November 2007, working for 14 months as an English teacher at a hagwon in Daegu and now for a decade as an editor at an intellectual property law firm in Seoul. Among my published books are Travels of an American-Korean, 2008−2013. Part II, covering the years 2014 through 2019, is in press. I do not boast in saying that few people have seen more of this country in the last 11 years than me. Big cities, remote villages in every province, islands east, south and west, and all along the DMZ—I’ve been nearly everywhere. In the course of those trips, I have met a lot of people, had adventures and mishaps, and learned. Among those many excursions, none was more significant than the warm day just over six years ago when I visited Heungdeoksa and the Cheongju Early Printing Museum, and delved into the story of the priceless artifact we know as Jikji.

To whom could I dedicate this book other than the late Dr. Park Byeong-seon?

RAP

Seoul, Korea

Part 1

The Birth and Peregrinations of Jikji

It only seems right to commence the Jikji story with its author, Baegun. A monk, he had a Buddhist name, Gyeonghan, and was and still is sometimes given the honorifics Master and Venerable. Although he lived 650 years ago (1298−1374), the details of Baegun’s life are surprisingly well known. He was born in Gobu in what is today Buan County, North Jeolla Province. This is just a few kilometers from Korea’s west coast.

Baegun seems to have been an ardent Buddhist from his earliest days, studying the scriptures, working with men like Shiyu Qinggong and Pingshan Chulin, and spending long hours in contemplation at mountaintop hermitages in Korea and China. Baegun’s elders noted his spiritual progress and praised him. In 1352, while practicing with other monks at Seonggok Temple, he is said to have achieved a profound awakening: "As I was seated in meditation, Great Master Yongjia’s words in the Jeungdoga spontaneously came to me—‘Do not try to abandon false thoughts, do not try to grasp the true mind. The real nature of ignorance is Buddha nature, and the illusive empty body is the Dharma body.’ While focusing on these words, suddenly I experienced no-mind. I had no thoughts. I was cut off from the past and the future. When I reached this state, I suddenly saw the entire world within myself."

I find such abstruse esoterica very difficult to grasp, but it is indicative of Baegun and the realm of 14th century Seon Buddhism. Dharma heir to Shiyu Qinggong, he lived and taught at a couple of temples in Haeju (in modern day North Korea) and one in Yeoju. The Record of Venerable Baegun’s Sayings, compiled by his disciples Seoksan and Daldam, is a well-regarded book. But his lasting fame derives from Jikji, the full title of which is Baegun hwasung chorok buljo jikji simche yojeol. He completed it in 1372, two years before his death at Chwiam Temple in Yeoju. (There is a Baegun Mountain [and a Baegun Lake] in southern Gyeonggi Province, one in Pocheon, one between Wonju and Jecheon, one in Gangwon Province, one in South Jeolla Province and one in North Jeolla Province, along with Baegun Station on the Seoul subway system. Whether any or all of them are named after the author of Jikji, I cannot say.)

Based on the writings of Baegun’s teacher, Seokok Cheonggong, Jikji is a compilation of hymns, eulogies, epitaphs, prose, poetry and other teachings by the seven Buddhas of antiquity (Vipassi Buddha, Sikhi Buddha, Vessabhu Buddha, Kakusandha Buddha, Konagamana Buddha and Kassapa Buddha, and the more familiar Gautama Buddha), 28 Indian patriarchs, 110 Chinese monks and one (Daeryeong) from Korea. Its essential teaching is sudden enlightenment about the nature of existence and then gradual cultivation of the self. The title of Jikji has been translated as Anthology of Great Buddhist Priests’ Zen Teachings, Master Baegun’s Excerpts from the Buddhas and Patriarchs, and more loosely as Sutras Pointing Directly to the Mind.

Our focus, of course, is not so much the content of these books and documents as their method of printing. While woodblock printing, also known as xylography, was slow and laborious, it was a refined technology in Korea and its widespread use contributed to the country having a relatively high rate of literacy. It may have first been employed with Mugujeonggwang-dae dharani sutra in 751, back during the Unified Silla dynasty; the oldest extant printed document in the world, it is obviously quite significant—although some historians insist that honor belongs to China’s Diamond sutra since it is precisely dated to May 11, 868. Also still in existence is Dhatu-karanda dharani sutra (1007). The Chinese, who began to mass-produce classical texts in the 10th century, and Koreans led the world in the crucial fields of paper-making and printing, the Japanese following in their wake.

No one can gainsay the importance of Buddhism in Korean history. It was adopted as the official state religion in the Baekje, Gorguryeo and Silla kingdoms, as well as in Unified Silla. Buddhism aided in making the people of the Korean peninsula whole, an entity distinct from their Chinese and Japanese neighbors. It played a big role in the country’s cultural development and in the formation of Korea’s national character. Contemporary Buddhists read and revere Jikji.

Many documents of a secular nature—military orders and historical treatises, for example—were also printed in China and Korea from the 8th through the 14th centuries. Woodblock printing was more advanced there than elsewhere in Asia (and not reaching Europe until the 13th century). Tried and tested, it was nonetheless inadequate. The search was on for faster, better and more reliable printing methods.

A big step forward was the creation of movable wood blocks, for which we can thank a prominent Chinese government official named Feng Dao (882−954). And a century later came another major improvement in the process, movable porcelain type, and the man most responsible was Bi Sheng (990−1051). Unlike Feng Dao, he was an obscure commoner. In the last decade of his life, this artisan from China’s Hubei Province forged an amalgam of clay and glue, creating pieces of type that could be arranged into logographic symbols, words, sentences and so forth. Bi Sheng realized that it was tedious and slow if used for only a few copies of a book. But if many copies were desired, movable porcelain type was quicker and more efficient. While this was a revolutionary advance, its impact was limited because of the very complicated Chinese script. Of perhaps greater importance was that leaders in the Song, Liao, Jin, Xia, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties perceived its potential as a destabilizing influence and thus sought to tightly control its use. A third possible reason for the muted effect of movable porcelain printing in China is that Confucians, adherents of the country’s other major belief system, did not look kindly on the spreading of Buddhist texts. Put simply, Confucianism favored rigid maintenance of social status, while Buddhism was quite the opposite; it was about transcending such ephemera. No doubt Confucians—in China as well as in Korea—felt threatened by the use of movable print in the creation of Buddhist-oriented books.

I earlier referred to paper-making, obviously a key part of the printing process. It is said to have been invented by a Chinese eunuch named Cai Lun in 105 A.D., but soon the Koreans were making paper of their own—hanji, derived from the mulberry tree. In time, the Chinese regarded it as equal to or better than their own. Be that as it may, paper-making embarked on a 1,200-year journey to the west. It moved to Dunhuang (150 A.D.), Loulan (200), Turfan (399), Samarkand (751), Baghdad (793), Cairo (900), Fez (1000), Herault (1189), Venice (1276), Nuremberg (1391), and Cologne and London (1420). Much of this activity, as you see, was on the Silk Road. It is quite possible that printing technology would soon follow the same path.

The other critical element in the printing process was ink, which Korea produced in high quality even in the Three Kingdoms period. Oil soot, pine charcoal, a mixture of carbon-black and glue deriving from water deer, and others utilizing different extracts were employed as ink in the crafting of books.

Movable porcelain type, which had been imported into Korea, was problematic; it was not very clear, and the type tended to crumble over time. Some Korean artisans—alas, their names are not recorded—began experimenting with alloys of bronze, tin, lead and copper in the early 13th century. They utilized an early version of movable metal type to print Choi Yun-ui’s Sangjeong gogeum yemun (Prescribed Ritual Text of the Past and Present) in 1234, Nammyeong cheonhwa sangson jeungdoga (Song of Enlightenment with Commentaries by Buddhist Monk Nammyeong) in 1239, Donggukisangggukjip (a collection of the works of Yi Gyu-bo [1168−1241]) and Jabidoryangchambeopjiphae (Compassion Dojo Principles), although there were undoubtedly others. Gaeseong seems to have been the main printing site, which should come as no surprise since it was then the capital of the Goryeo dynasty. Small print shops also operated as adjuncts in Buddhist temples, one of which was Heungdeoksa in Cheongju (North Chungcheong Province). It was close by a stream called Musimcheon.

This was a relatively unimportant temple, not like the three jewels of Tongdosa, Haeinsa (both in South Gyeongsang Province) and Songgwangsa (South Jeolla Province). Other temples, in addition, were far older, bigger and more established—including Kaesimsa (North Hamgyong Province), Singyesa (Gangwon Province), Sudeoksa (South Chungcheong Province), Pyohunsa (on Diamond Mountain), Bulguksa (North Gyeongsang Province) and Mireuksa (North Jeolla Province). Heungdeoksa—the original name of which may have been Gyehangjisa—was constructed no later than 849. A typical Korean Buddhist temple, it probably had an entrance gate, a shamanic shrine, a single pagoda, a Golden Hall (where ceremonial obeisance was paid to Buddha and others who had achieved enlightenment), an auditorium, east and west corridors, a hermitage and monastic quarters. What stands today as Heungdeoksa is a reconstruction, less than 30 years old, of its Golden Hall. While there is no hard