At some point in the early 1890s, Victor Collin de Plancy, the French ambassador to Korea, added an old Buddhist-oriented book to his already sizable collection. He had no idea that Baegun hwasung chorok buljo jikji simche yojeol ("Jikji, " for short) was the oldest extant document printed on movable metal type. In the decades that followed, its value in the eyes of historians and cultural anthropologists has risen enormously-evidence most of all that the printing press derives from East Asia and not Johannes Gutenberg’s workshop in Mainz, Germany. Jikji, and One NGO’s Lonely Fight to Bring it Home-dedicated to the fearless Dr. Park Byeong-seon-traces the Jikji story from its composition by a monk named Baegun to its printing at Heungdeok Temple in Cheongju, Korea in 1377 to Collin de Plancy to its present circumstances in a lockbox at the National Library of France.
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