August 16, 2006 - Jikji Museum and the Miracle Children's Museum

The Jikji Printing Museum is dedicated to providing information about Korea's long history of printing. Unesco has recognized Korea as invented metal movable type printing some 78 years before Gutenberg. Korea claims that this invention led to the literacy explosion around the world, which led to just about every socio-political change over the last 600 years to the internet. This is all well and good, but to claim that one invention was responsible for all this was, to me, a little exagerrated. The Chinese created metal movable type before the Koreans did, they just couldn't figure out a way to keep the tiles stationary during the printing process. They used wooden tiles before they invented metal movable type, so why do the Koreans believe that they invented this out of thin air? A more reasoned acknowledgement might be that the Chinese improved upon stone tablets with movable type, which the Koreans improved upon with metal movable type, which Gutenberg improved upon with his metal movable type press which led to just about every socio-political change over the last 600 years to the internet. Doncha think?

Later we visited the Miracle Children's Museum. The idea for a chidlren's library began when a plea from a Korean television corporation to their viewing audience went out for donations to build 8 children's libraries across Korea. The public responded by promptly raising enough money for all 8 libraries in less than a year. So public money paid for the libraries, but the toen/cities that were awarded libraries are responsible for budgeting the necessary funds to maintain them. I'm all for children learning to read at an early age. The library was nice, the kids were cute; it's just that I'm not that into seeing how a children's library operates.