M. Sophia Neumann writes on lithub about the fact that in Korea, a scholar and civil minister named Choe Yun-Ui was using movable type to print books around the year 1234. However, due to Korea being under siege, the technology and knowledge of the technology never really made it out of the country.
“The innovation that Johannes Gutenberg is said to have created was small metal pieces with raised backwards letters, arranged in a frame, coated with ink, and pressed to a piece of paper, which allowed books to be printed more quickly. But Choe Yun-ui did that—and he did it 150 years before Gutenberg was even born.”
(via kottke)