page_title: History of gunpowder
section_title: Korea
hierarchical_section_title: History of gunpowder / Spread to Asia, the Middle East, and Europe / Korea
caption_attribution_description: 500 year old hwacha (火車) instruction manual
context_page_description: Gunpowder is the first explosive to have been developed. Popularly listed as one of the "Four Great Inventions" of China, it was discovered during the late Tang dynasty but the earliest record of a written formula appeared in the Song dynasty. Knowledge of gunpowder spread rapidly throughout Asia, the Middle East and Europe, possibly as a result of the Mongol conquests during the 13th century, with written formula for it appearing in the 1267
  Opus Majus treatise by Roger Bacon and a 1280 treatise by Hasan al-Rammah. It was employed in warfare to some effect from at least the 10th century in weapons such as fire arrows, bombs, and the fire lance before the appearance of the gun. While the fire lance was eventually supplanted by the gun, other gunpowder weapons such as rockets and fire arrows continued to see use in China, Korea, India, and eventually Europe. Bombs too never ceased to develop and continued to progress into the modern day as grenades, mines, and other explosive implements. Gunpowder has also been used for non-military purposes such as fireworks for entertainment, or in explosives for mining and tunneling.
context_section_description: Korea began production of gunpowder during the years 1374–76. In the 14th century a Korean scholar named Choe Museon discovered a way to produce it after visiting China and bribing a merchant by the name of Li Yuan for the gunpowder formula. In 1377 he figured out how to extract potassium nitrate from the soil and subsequently invented the juhwa, Korea's first rocket, and further developments led to the birth of singijeons, Korean arrow rockets. The multiple rocket launcher known as hwacha ("fire cart" 火車) was developed from the juhwa and singijeon in Korea by 1409 during the Joseon Dynasty. Its inventors include Yi Do (이도, not to be mistaken for Sejong the Great) and Choi Hae-san (최해산, son of Choe Museon). However the first hwachas did not fire rockets, but utilized mounted bronze guns that shot iron-fletched darts. Rocket launching hwachas were developed in 1451 under the decree of King Munjong and his younger brother Pe. ImYung (Yi Gu, 임영대군 이구). This "Munjong Hwacha" is the well-known type today, and could fire 100 rocket arrows or 200 small Chongtong bullets at one time with changeable modules. At the time, 50 units were deployed in Hanseong (present-day Seoul), and another 80 on the northern border. By the end of 1451, hundreds of hwachas were deployed throughout Korea.
  Naval gunpowder weapons also appeared and were rapidly adopted by Korean ships for conflicts against Japanese pirates in 1380 and 1383. By 1410, 160 Korean ships were reported to have equipped artillery of some sort. Mortars firing thunder-crash bombs are known to have been used, and four types of cannons are mentioned: chonja (heaven), chija (earth), hyonja (black), and hwangja (yellow), but their specifications are unknown. These cannons typically shot wooden arrows tipped with iron, the longest of which were nine feet long, but stone and iron balls were sometimes used as well.
caption: A hwacha manual from the 16th century
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