Printing Woodblocks and Manuscripts of Daedong unbu gunok (Encyclopedia of Korea, Arranged by the Rhymes of the Entries)

Printing Woodblocks and Manuscripts of Daedong unbu gunok (Encyclopedia of Korea, Arranged by the Rhymes of the Entries)

These are 16th-century draft manuscript volumes and 19th-century printing woodblocks of the Encyclopedia of Korea, Arranged by the Rhymes of the Entries, the first Korean encyclopedia.

This massive work was compiled over the span of 30 years by Gwon Mun-hae (1534-1591), a civil official and scholar of the middle period of the Joseon dynasty (1392-1910), and completed in 1589. Its 20 volumes contain over 20,000 entries divided into 11 topics, such as geography, names of countries, clans, given names, famous devoted sons and virtuous wives, government leaders, immortals, as well as names of trees, flowers, animals, etc., from the time of the first ancient Korean kingdom until the mid-Joseon period. It was modeled on Yunfu qunyu (韻府群玉), a compendium written by Yin Shifu (陰時夫), a scholar of Yuan China (1271-1368), which is why its entries are arranged by the rhymes of Chinese characters in their titles.

In 1812, Gwon Jin-rak, the descendant of Gwon Mun-hae, began carving printing woodblocks based on the draft manuscripts from the 16th century. By 1836 a set of 667 woodblocks were completed. Each woodblock measures 57.4 cm in width, 24.1 cm in height, 2 cm in depth, and is carved on both sides.

Source: Korea Heritage Service signboard ↗ · collected 2026-10-08