Korea's Jikji (1377) is the oldest surviving metal-type book

The Jikji, a Buddhist anthology printed at Heungdeok-sa temple in Cheongju, Korea, in 1377, is the oldest surviving book printed with movable metal type — about 78 years before the Gutenberg Bible of around 1455. Its full title translates as Anthology of Great Buddhist Priests’ Zen Teachings, compiled by the monk Baegun and his disciples.

The key word is surviving. Korean records show metal type in use by 1234, but nothing printed then is known to survive, and printing itself is far older: the oldest dated printed book is a woodblock scroll from 868. Of the metal-printed edition’s two volumes, only the second is known to survive (a later woodblock edition survives complete in Korea) — and it is in Paris, not Korea. How it got there, and how long the world took to notice, runs like this:

• 1377: Printed in Cheongju with cast, reusable metal characters.
• Before 1900: Victor Collin de Plancy, French consul in Seoul, collects several hundred old Korean books, the Jikji among them, and ships them to France.
• 1900: Shown in the Korean pavilion at the Paris Universal Exhibition, its first public display in Europe.
• 1911–1950: Sold to the collector Henri Vever, who bequeaths it to the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
• 1972: Korean historian Park Byeong-seon, working at the library, identifies its significance; it is exhibited in 1972 and 1973.
• 2001: Inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register; a UNESCO prize for preserving documentary heritage now bears its name.

For conservation reasons it has rarely been shown since; in 2023 the BnF displayed it alongside the Gutenberg Bible. The size of the head start depends on Gutenberg’s date: Guinness World Records, using 1450, counts 73 years; the BnF and University of Utah researchers, using about 1455, count 78. Either way, Korean printers were casting metal type generations before Mainz.