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Hunminjeongeum: The World’s Only Script Whose Creation Principle Survives in a Book

훈민정음 해례본 첫머리의 어제서문(御製序文). '나라의 말이 중국과 달라…'로 시작해 백성을 위해 새로 스물여덟 자(二十八字)를 만든 뜻을 밝혔다.

Most of the world’s scripts emerged gradually, with no record of who made them or when. The Hunminjeongeum is different: an explanatory book, the Haerye, survives that sets out the very principle by which the letters were made — consonants imitating the speech organs, vowels imitating heaven, earth, and human. This is the story of its creation, the near-lost Haerye found in 1940, and the precise meaning of calling it ‘the world’s only’.

Jikji: The Oldest Surviving Book Printed with Movable Metal Type, 78 Years Before Gutenberg

직지심체요절 하권. 1377년(고려 우왕 3년) 청주 흥덕사에서 금속활자로 찍은, 현존하는 세계에서 가장 오래된 금속활자 인쇄본이다.

Printed with movable metal type at Heungdeoksa temple in Cheongju, Goryeo, in 1377, the Jikji Simche Yojeol is the oldest surviving book in the world printed with movable metal type — 78 years before Gutenberg’s Bible. Yet it is not ‘the world’s first’, and we follow that subtle boundary, the beeswax casting method, its journey to France, Dr. Park Byeong-seon’s rediscovery, and its UNESCO listing.

Aurora: The Curtain of Light the Solar Wind Paints Across the Sky

밤하늘을 가르는 녹색 오로라 커튼이 호수에 비친다(미국 글래시어 국립공원).

The light of an aurora is, in fact, a picture drawn by particles that traveled some 150 million km from the Sun to meet Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere. From the solar wind to color, shape, viewing spots, and ancient records, here is the science of the aurora told as a story.

Ginkgo: A ‘Living Fossil’ Older Than the Dinosaurs

역광을 받아 황금빛으로 빛나는 부채꼴 은행잎

The ginkgo that paints autumn streets gold has barely changed in over 200 million years — a true ‘living fossil.’ From a lone surviving lineage and swimming sperm to thousand-year-old giants, this is the story of a design that endured time and a life preserved by human hands.

A Stone Buried and Unearthed Again: The Xi’an Nestorian Stele, Christianity in China 800 Years Before the Jesuits

The stele standing in the Stele Forest of Xi’an — the ‘Daqin Stele.’ Erected near Chang’an in Tang China in 781 according to its inscription, this stone records about 150 years of the history of Jingjiao (the Church of the East) in Chinese and Syriac. From its burial around the Huichang persecution to its reappearance some 780 years later, we follow — with a source-critical eye — the East Asian Christian history that a single stone revived.

Carving Out Earth and Filling It Back In: The Story of Sanggam Celadon, Invented by Goryeo Potters

구름과 학 무늬를 흑백 상감으로 새긴 고려청자 매병

The sixty-nine cranes carved on the Kansong Art Museum’s National Treasure ‘Celadon Maebyeong with Inlaid Cloud and Crane Design’ are not painted with a brush but patterns made by carving out clay and filling it back with other clay. We trace the tenacity of Goryeo potters who began with imitation and perfected the distinctive beauty of bisaek and sanggam—through the kilns of Gangjin and Buan and on into buncheong ware after the decline.