The Washington weekly post., 1899-05-30
THE INVENTIVE KOREANS.
Made the First Movable Type asd Pho
nettc Alphabet.

Frpu lfarpsrs aaxsrins
Even Korea can boast OF her share Of
the great inventions Of the world, though,
siugularly enough. neither the world at
large nor she herself. except In one case.
has benefited permanently by the 'nven-
tons.
Korea was the first Of all peoples 20
originate movable metal type For hun
dreds Of years the country and the king
had been under the domination OF the
Bgddhis. priesthood. and the land vas
suffering the extremes of saceraotalism-
Every third son must by law become a
mOnk-in other words. an uuprcductive
member of society; the killing OF COW
WAS greater crime than the killing Of 4
man. The peoples houses were being
seized for the erection OF worse than use
less mOnasteries. At last Gen vi Ta-Jo.
whom dotard King had sent upon
the insane mission Of invading Caina,
turned TO his soldiers and said. shall We
return to the capital and apply ourselves
TO the cleansing of the unspeakahle cor
ruptiOn cf our country He was APP
plaU|cd to the echo, and, like Julius
Caesar. but with better purpose. he re-
crossed the Ya!u, Korea's Rubicon.
marched back upon the capital and sealed
the death-warrant OF sacerdotalism. No
sooner had the new dynasty been founded
in I+a2 than literature received new
impetus through the revival of Confucian-
ism and the study OF the ancient classics.
The monEsteries, which had become the
repositories of the scholarship of TIE
land. were filed with the unintelligihle
jargOn Of Buddhism. and literature was
almost wholly confined 10 its ritual But
now schools were being established. books
were being demanded anC students were
calling impatiently for the time-honore1
classics, Thus it was that In the reign
OF King L Ta-Jong fount of metal type
was cast, the first the world had ever
seen. The art OF typography had existed
Tor centuries, and clay type had also
heen used in Japan, but Korea was the
hrst 10 discern the need OF the more per-
manent ard durable form of metal type;
and so well did she carry out her plan
that the type then cast has come down
10 the present day practically unimpaire1.
Each type was built on the principle OF
the arch, being cylindrically eoncave on
the under size. The purpose of this was
TO secure a firmer hold upon the bed of
beesw2X which constituted the form"
technically so called. A shallow tray was
hlled with wax and the type, after being
firmly imbedded in it, were "paned'' in
the ordinary manner The printer. sit
ink BY means Of a soft brush, after which
sheet Of paper was lightly laid upon the
form. A piece of felt was brushed softly
across the porous paper with the right
hand, and the left removed the printed
page. In this way il was possible tO
strike off some l.500 impressions in a day.
The annals of Korea show clearly
that there have been two such founts cast
ore about the year 1876. and the other
some two centuries later Bur we find
fv-n mt ffa Inc ,.S
them, exist to-day. Those of the later
casting ere Eow in common use IN the
Korean government printing Office.
Korea boasts of the invention OF pure
phOretic alphabet. OF course il wes not
the first. but ii was original with her and
therefore 10 less creditabe The inven-
tion of this alphabet is the ,ast OF three
great protests which Korea has made
ar6inst the cUmbersomeness of the Chi
nese written character. King Se-Jo, early
in the fifteenth century. determined that
the people must have a phonetic alpha
bet. and a college of scholars was con-
vened, with the distinguished Song Sam
nun at its head. to devise an alphabet.
Locking about for model they found
nothing like a phonetic alphabet, except
in the Tibetan books which had been
brought from China and deposited in the
mCnasteries of Korea, But Tibetan, like
Sanskrit and like the Semitic languages,
Is consonantal in its character. The con-
is simply the bridge that spans the inter-
val between consOnant and cOnSonant.
Song Sam-muns genius is demonstrated
in his recognition of the fact that this is
wrCrg. and that the vowel is the basis of
all articulate speech. He therefore divid-
ed the symbols into two classes" moth
err and ''chiid"-the vowel being the
mother and the consOnant the child. This
was Tot only absolutely original with
him. but il was absolutely scientific. The
Tibetan furnished the basis FOR the Kor-
can consonants-not the finished Tlbetan
OF to-day, bur the singular characters
found in the T,betan Buddhist books OF
Korea. For the vowels they turned TO
the ancient seal character of China, and
from its simplest radicals picked out SIX,
which became the Korean vowels- The
combination of the letters i'm the syllable
was, so to speak, triangular.
In simplicity the Korean characters are
unsurpas ssed. Tradition gays that the in
Ventor took them all from the Korean
door, which consists of combination OF
horizontal and obliQue fattice-work; and
in, truth This could be done.