Three late-Joseon woodblock printing plates for literary collections that were taken to the United States as souvenirs in the 1970s are set to return to Korea.

The Korea Heritage Service, together with the Overseas Cultural Heritage Foundation, announced that on the 8th (local time) at the Korean Empire Legation in the United States in Washington, it received the donation of one printing block each for <Cheokam Seonsaeng Munjip>, <Songja Daejeon>, and <Beonamjip>.

The <Cheokam Seonsaeng Munjip> printing block, carved in 1917, is for the collected writings of militia leader Kim Do-hwa, who operated in Andong during the Eulmi Righteous Army uprising that erupted after the 1895 assassination of Empress Myeongseong. <Songja Daejeon> compiles the collected writings and chronology of the late-Joseon Confucian scholar Uam Song Si-yeol. The blocks were first published in 1787, and in 1907 the Japanese military burned them all. Descendants of Song Si-yeol and the Confucian literati recarved them in 1926 based on books. The <Beonamjip> printing block, carved in 1824, is for the collected writings of Beonam Chae Je-gong, a late-Joseon official and man of letters. The <Cheokam Seonsaeng Munjip> and <Beonamjip> blocks are also part of the UNESCO Memory of the World listing “Korean Confucian Printing Woodblocks,” registered in 2015.

There were more than 1,000 <Cheokam Seonsaeng Munjip> blocks, but only about 20 remain in Korea today. A total of 11,023 <Songja Daejeon> blocks were recarved, but some have been lost. In the early 1970s, Aaron Gordon, an American who worked at the Korea office of the U.S. Agency for International Development, bought one block each of the two from an antique dealer in Korea and took them to the United States. The character areas, which should have had ink residue, had been overpainted in gold and silver, and the originally rough side handles had been replaced with processed wood, turning them into souvenir-like objects.

The <Cheokam Seonsaeng Munjip> block was held by his wife, and the <Songja Daejeon> block by his younger sister. While his wife was inquiring last year with the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art about donating the <Cheokam Seonsaeng Munjip> block, the foundation arranged to take it over.

Of the 1,159 <Beonamjip> blocks in total, only 358 remained in Korea. This block, too, was purchased from an antique dealer by an American who had worked in Korea in the early 1970s, and the family of Korean American Kim Eun-hye received it as a gift. Kim also accepted a donation proposal from the U.S. office of the foundation and has now donated it.

The Korea Heritage Service said, “The artifacts donated this time show how some printing blocks that were stolen or lost domestically in the 1970s were disguised as souvenirs and then taken overseas. They are important clues for understanding the circumstances and patterns of the overseas transfer of cultural heritage at the time,” and added, “We believe there are more such clues, and we will take follow-up measures to identify additional cases in the United States and encourage voluntary returns.”

Meanwhile, on the 9th (local time), Korea Heritage Service Administrator Heo Min, together with Ambassador to the United States Kang Kyung-wha, decided to attach a commemorative plaque reading ‘the first embassy of the Republic of Korea’ to the consular section building of the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Washington. This building is where the Korean government established its first embassy in 1949. This is the third time the Korea Heritage Service has attached a commemorative plaque to cultural heritage overseas, following the Korean Empire Legation in the United States in 2021 and the Korean Empire Legation in the United Kingdom in 2023.