Printshops, Pressmen, and the Poetic Page in Colonial Korea

Abstract

By analyzing the way vernacular Korean poetry of the 1920s was produced, this article initiates a study of the sociology of Korean literary production. Based on a survey of forty-five vernacular Korean books of poetry produced between 1921 and 1929, bank records, Japanese colonial government records, and printed interviews, the study describes the people, organizations, and technologies involved in the production of vernacular Korean poetry in the early twentieth century. It suggests that a small number of men in a few printing facilities working within restrained typographic conditions were responsible for printing the extant corpus of Korean vernacular poetry from the 1920s. An overview of the creative ways in which poetry was expressed visually and a discussion of the poem “Pandal” (Half moon), which appears differently in the two originary alternate issues of Kim So-wŏl’s canonical 1925 work Chindallaekkot (Azaleas), make it clear that an understanding of these people and organizations, as well as of the technologies they employed, should inform how we approach texts from this period hermeneutically.

The Faces of Poetry in 1920s Korea

Poet and typographer Robert Bringhurst writes, “Typography is to literature as musical performance is to composition: an essential act of interpretation, full of endless opportunities for insight or obtuseness” (1996, 19). Reading the poetry of canonical Korean poet Kim So-wŏl (1902–1934) in the broad-stroked typefaces of Ch’oe Nam-sŏn’s publishing house Sinmun’gwan, used to print early issues of the intellectual monthly Kaebyŏk (Creation), means experiencing it differently than reading it in the sturdy faces of Hansŏng Tosŏ’s printshop, used to print So-wŏl’s collection Chindallaekkot (Azaleas) in 1925, or as set by Ch’oe Hyo-sŏp and Kim Hyo-jŏng for Kim Chong-uk’s Chŏngbon So-wŏl chŏnjip (Complete original works of So-wŏl) in 1982, and reset in 2005. Many other typographical, as well as editorial, elements differentiate these written performances of Kim So-wŏl’s poetry. According to bibliographer D. F. McKenzie, these iterations are fertile ground from which we can extract informative literary and social histories. Moreover, we can perceive in them the literary improvisations, to borrow Bringhurst’s concept, of those who made these textual objects.

Much work needs to be done if we are to understand modern Korean literature in these terms. This article begins this work by describing the printing facilities and pressmen responsible for creating vernacular Korean poetry in the 1920s. It also describes the typefaces and printing equipment employed at the most important printing facilities. It concludes with a brief description of how such poetry is laid out in books of early twentieth-century Korean verse, as well as a discussion of the poem “Pandal” from Chindallaekkot by Kim So-wŏl (1902–1934). My analysis suggests the hermeneutical importance of attending to the sociology of Korean colonial-era literary creations. A more general historical treatment of publishing, literary production, and poetry’s relative position in the market for vernacular Korean texts during Japan’s occupation of the Korean peninsula must be saved for another discussion;¹ the emphasis here is on describing the people, organizations, and technologies central to the production of these texts, as well as the interpretive possibilities enabled by a more thorough investigation of the sociology of Korean literary production. These topics have been overlooked by previous scholarship on Korean literature and publishing history, including the welcome recent flurry of research on Korean colonial-era periodicals, readership, and prose fiction.

We learn a number of important facts about poetry, literary production, and Korea by approaching Korea’s literary texts with an eye toward understanding the people and technologies that created them. We discover, for example, that poetry in 1920s Korea was printed by a handful of men at a small number of financially shaky joint-stock organizations. The publishing and printing venture Hansŏng Tosŏ was central to poetic activity during the culturally important decade following the March 1, 1919, independence movement, a period during which Korea’s vernacular press expanded quickly. A single man working at Hansŏng Tosŏ, No Ki-jŏng, was responsible for overseeing the production of roughly a quarter of the books of vernacular Korean poetry produced between 1921 and 1929. An examination of the books of poetry that No created reveals that he, like his fellow pressmen, worked within restrictive typographic constraints. The discussion of the poem “Pandal,” which appears differently in the two originary alternate issues of Kim So-wŏl’s canonical Chindallaekkot, makes it clear that an understanding of these constraints should inform how we read texts fashioned by poets such as Kim in concert with pressmen such as No.

Identifying actors and technologies integral to literary creation in colonial Korea enables alternate interpretive approaches to Korean literary texts by incorporating cultural histories expressed by Korea’s literary artifacts in hermeneutical praxis. Although the material production of poetry was concentrated in the hands of a few individuals with limited typographic choices, the page layout of each book of poetry from 1920s Korea is unique, which suggests that the space defined by the pages of these books was used creatively by pressmen as well as poets. The subtle typographic differences between the two versions of Kim So-wŏl’s “Pandal” that appear in the two initial issues of Chindallaekkot encourage us to investigate Korean poetic texts from this period for how they are expressed bibliographically and linguistically—for how the literary and social histories we discover can enable our critical activities—rather than to simply refigure a perceived linguistic message metonymically, the usual practice in the field of Korean literature.

The analysis that follows is based on bank records, records of the Chōsen Sōtokufu (Japanese colonial authority), printed interviews, and a survey of forty-five individual copies of poetry collections produced during the second decade of Korea’s colonial ordeal. Two sources in particular have guided my decision about which books to include in the survey upon which this article is based: Ha Tong-ho’s 1982 “Han’guk kŭndae sijip ch’ongnim sŏji chŏngni” (A systematic bibliography of collections and anthologies of Korean modern verse) and Kim Hae-sŏng’s 1988 Hyŏndae Han’guksi sajŏn (Dictionary of contemporary Korean poetry).²

Poetry’s Printshops

The printing industry expanded rapidly during the first decades of Japan’s colonial occupation of Korea. One hundred to two hundred different printers and binderies were in operation in 1920s Korea,³ a startling number given that it had been less than a half century since the first letterpresses arrived on the peninsula in 1883 to print the Hansŏng sunbo (Capital gazette) at the Pangmun’guk (Office of culture and information). The printing industry had grown explosively, particularly after 1910, when only nineteen printing and binding facilities were in operation (Chōsen Sōtokufu 1923, 82).⁴ Between 1911 and 1921 the number of such facilities increased more than fivefold (Chōsen Sōtokufu 1923, 82). By the 1920s, a large variety of printing equipment—including letterpress and lithographic, as well as collotype and gravure technologies—was in place to fulfill the ever-expanding needs and desires of publishers and others who used print media (Taehan Inswae Munhwa Hyŏphoe 1999, 226). The number of printing facilities would more than double again by 1930 and continue to grow throughout Japan’s occupation, although the rate of growth would slow in the next decade (see appendix 1). Moreover, although Seoul was certainly the center of printing and binding activities, statistics suggest that by 1937 a number of printers and binderies served the needs of those who lived at a distance from the metropole, most notably in the Kyŏngsang provinces (Genroku 1941, 24–26).

However, despite the large number of facilities available to publishers in the 1920s, the vast majority of vernacular Korean poetry was printed in just three locations.⁵ More than 40 percent of the decade’s vernacular poetry books were printed at a single location, Hansŏng Tosŏ Chusik Hoesa, and an additional 20 percent of were printed at Taedong Inswaeso. The Christian printing and publishing venture Ch’angmunsa, launched by Yun Ch’i-ho and his associates in January 1923, printed four books that appear in lists of vernacular poetry (in addition to publishing two). In total, about 70 percent of the era’s collections of vernacular poetry were printed at these three facilities alone, and just ten different facilities printed the books surveyed (see appendix 2).

While records such as bills of sale, sales reports, and invoices—to say nothing of worker rosters, work schedules, or proof sheets—do not appear to have survived the Korean War (1950–1953) and subsequent decades, we can learn something about how these facilities were organized and managed, as well as a little bit about the machines they used, from bank records, surveys sconducted by the colonial authority, and personal diaries. These documents suggest that the companies responsible for printing the largest number of vernacular poetry titles were small, fiscally unsteady joint-stock operations. Knowing this helps us to contextualize how Korea’s first books of modern Korean poetry were created while enabling us to identify with increasing, if not complete, precision the individuals and technologies directly involved in creating them.

Ch’angmunsa

Yun Ch’i-ho begins the January 31, 1923, entry to his diary with the words, “Lovely. Very cold” (Yun Ch’i-ho, n.d., kwŏn-8, 348).⁶ That day and into the night, he had attended various ceremonies commemorating the founding of Ch’angmunsa, a printing and publishing venture in which he was invested. A Christian and prominent figure in elite society during Korea’s colonial ordeal, Yun had served four years in jail between 1911 and 1915 for his alleged involvement in a plot to assassinate Japanese governor-general Terauchi Masatake. After Korea’s liberation in August 1945 and Yun’s death a few months later, he would be deemed a Japanese collaborator by subsequent South Korean governments for his attempts to promote Japan’s war efforts during the tumultuous years after 1937. In January 1923, however, he was content. He and his colleagues had managed, despite many difficulties, to raise enough capital to launch their new publishing and printing venture, for which Yun became a director (ch’wich’e) and major shareholder. Hinting at just how difficult it was to raise the capital, Yun writes (in English; he attended university in the United States) of the company’s formal organization:

All things considered, I’m glad. … While the capital had to be reduced to nearly one third of what the enthusiastic promoters had aimed at viz: 20,000 shares of 1 million yen, the actual paying in of more than 60,000 yen, in these days of money famine, is another striking evidence that the Christian Church is a force that is better organized, more intelligent and more public spirited than any other organization in Korea.

(Yun Ch’i-ho, n.d., kwŏn-8, 348)

The contented tone expressed so simply by “Lovely” at the opening of Yun’s diary entry would change when the “very cold” realities of running Ch’angmunsa presented themselves in the months ahead.

A little more than a month earlier, on November 17, 1922, Yun recalls in his diary a meeting of a committee charged with raising capital for the new company. A “fire-red speech,” Yun writes, by Pak Sŭng-bong, who would also become a director and the company’s largest shareholder, helped clinch passage of a resolution to reduce the capital they aimed to raise from twenty thousand to seven thousand shares. At that point only five thousand shares had actually been paid up, and, apparently, there were motions by some to reduce the amount of capital even further since they needed to acquire it quickly. Pak’s suggestion that he would “sell himself” if the money could not be found seemed to sway the committee to pursue the seven thousand–share figure instead of something less. Yun quips in his diary that day, “He didn’t tell them how much his body would be worth” (Yun Ch’i-ho, n.d., kwŏn-8, 336). Yun hints that things did not go particularly smoothly after Ch’angmunsa’s founding, either, when he notes on February 9, 1923, “First meeting of the Directors of Ch’angmunsa from 3 to 11 p.m.!” (Yun Ch’i-ho, n.d., kwŏn-8, 350).

By July 1923, the situation at Ch’angmunsa had taken a turn for the worse. Management and investors were at “dagger’s end,” according to Yun, who was exasperated. He writes laconically in his diary after returning home from another company meeting:

The Committee of Auditors presented report, showing among other things (1) [Pak Yong-ŭi] had embezzled ¥500.00 substituting the cash with a promissory note (of no value); (2) [Pak Pung-sŏ] the present [chŏnmu, managing director] had followed the example of his predecessor to the amount of ¥700.00; (3) Of the capital of ¥87,500.00 only ¥73,618.00 paid up while ¥13,882.00 in notes; (4) During the last six months the office expenses had amounted to ¥3,955.00 averaging ¥659 1/6 per month; (5) The cash balance now in the banks stands only ¥40,557.59. [Pak Sŭng-bong] and [Pak Pung-sŏ] who boastfully told the [ch’onghoe, committee] on the Nov. last year that if they failed to secure the paying up of first instalment [sic] of 2,000 shares inside of 1 month and half, they would make up the amount by (said [Pak Sŭng-bong]), selling his body, havent [sic] paid in the first instalment [sic] of 100 or more shares they have so enthusiastically taken.

(Yun Ch’i-ho, n.d., kwŏn-8, 386)

Yun’s sharp wit shines through and, in his deadpan rendition of the day’s events, we not only glimpse the everyday challenges of running a small to midsize merchandising and printing business in colonial Korea, but discover a statement about monthly office expenses, helpful for contextualizing the scale of operations of the era’s printing and publishing companies, especially those central to the production of poetry. In addition, we learn that nearly 16 percent of Ch’angmunsa’s paid-in capital was in the form of promissory notes, suggesting that bank records may obscure the unsettled finances of other such companies.

Hansŏng Tosŏ Chusik Hoesa

Diaries detailing the daily trials of running the joint-stock company Hansŏng Tosŏ, the organization most important to the production of books of vernacular poetry in the 1920s (as well as many other genres), appear not to have survived. However, bank and government records, along with the recollections of some of Hansŏng Tosŏ’s employees, suggest something about the size of Hansŏng Tosŏ and its operations. The inspiration of a well-known newspaper reporter, Chang To-bin,⁷ Hansŏng Tosŏ Chusik Hoesa was founded in late 1919 or early 1920 with paid-in capital of 75,000 wŏn (Chōsen Sōtokufu 1923, 50).⁸ In April 1920, the company took over the publication of the magazine Sŏul (Seoul), which had previously been run (chŏjak kyŏm parhaengja) by Chang, and in July, the company purchased for 2,369.6 wŏn (Kim Chong-su 2009, 257) a little more than 148 p’yŏng (approximately 5,267 square feet) in Kyŏnji-dong, where it would operate until 1955 (figure 1). Hansŏng Tosŏ’s paid-in capital remained 75,000 wŏn in 1923 and its nominal capital was 300,000 wŏn. This approximates the financial situation at Ch’angmunsa, which had 310,000 wŏn in nominal capital and approximately 74,000 wŏn paid in, despite bank records indicating that its paid-in capital was 87,500 wŏn (Nakamura 1923, 201–202, 299). We can extrapolate that Hansŏng Tosŏ would have had similar office expenses of approximately 600 or 700 wŏn a month. Interviews with former management at Hansŏng Tosŏ reveal that the company was organized into three departments: a publishing department (ch’ulp’anbu) in charge of editing manuscripts (as well as translating foreign literature), a sales department (yŏngŏppu) in charge of selling Hansŏng Tosŏ’s merchandise, and a printing department (inswaebu) that printed and bound its books and journals (Yi 1993, 297).

Figure 1.

The newly built Hansŏng Tosŏ Chusik Hoesa Building.

Source: Haksaenggye (December 1920, unnumbered front matter). Image from microfilm at the National Library of South Korea.⁹

From the recollections of former employees, we also learn something about the physical space in which Hansŏng Tosŏ operated and the number of people who worked there, which helps us deduce how many people were involved in the making of a literary text in 1920s Korea and the environment in which they worked. Han Yŏng-sŏn, a former head of the sales department, recalls that the Kyŏnji-dong building was two stories. As was common at the time, Hansŏng Tosŏ’s bookstore was on the first floor and its offices were on the second. The printing facility was in the rear. We also learn from Han’s recollections that Hansŏng Tosŏ had only a few employees. “Aside from me,” Han writes, “there were two others in the sales department. About four people worked in the printing department” (Yi 1993, 298). Han also remembers that three or four people worked in the publishing division. If his recollections are correct, this means that fewer than a dozen people worked at Hansŏng Tosŏ in the 1930s when Han joined the company at the age of seventeen (Yi 1993, 299).

Although official reports from the colonial authority also suggest that Hansŏng Tosŏ was a relatively small operation, they tell a somewhat different story about the number of workers there. An annual register of Korean factories compiled by the Sōtokufu, the Chōsen kōjō meibo (Register of Chōsen factories) classifies factories on the Korean peninsula into four groups. “A” companies had between five and fifty employees, “B” companies had between fifty and one hundred employees, “C” companies had between one hundred and two hundred employees, and “D” companies had more than two hundred employees. While in 1932 the Chōsen kōjō meibo indicates that Hansŏng Tosŏ was in the “A” group,¹⁰ in 1934 it suggests that Hansŏng Tosŏ was in the “B” group. This categorization is repeated by the 1936–1939 editions of the Chōsen kōjō meibo. The 1940 registry, meanwhile, suggests that Hansŏng Tosŏ had reverted to the “A” group.¹¹ The differences between Han’s statements and the official documents of the colonial government are difficult to reconcile. However, information about wages paid out by Taedong Inswae Chusik Hoesa, the second-largest publisher of books of poetry in the 1920s, which had a similar amount of paid-in capital as Hansŏng Tosŏ and Ch’angmunsa, suggests¹² (although not conclusively) that Han Yŏngsŏn’s recollections are more accurate.

Taedong Inswaeso

We learn from the balance sheet presented in the 1923 Chōsen Ginkō Kaisha yōroku that Taedong Inswaeso paid 800 wŏn in salaries during the yearlong period ending that June (Nakamura 1923, 202). The best available data for salaries in colonial Korea comes from 1931, when, according to government statistics, the daily wage for Korean workers in the printing and binding industry ranged from 4 yen to 10 sen (Chōsen Sōtokufu 1933, 84, 240). According to the colonial authority, the average wage was 92 sen a day for Korean adult male workers and 47 sen a day for women. Boys working in the printing and binding industry usually made 28 sen a day, while girls, interestingly, made just slightly more, 29 sen (Chōsen Sōtokufu 1933, 84 and 240). Although it is a crude calculation based on data collected from eight years later, it is difficult to imagine more than a handful of people working at Taedong Inswaeso in July 1923 if the wages the company claims to have paid are any indication. Using the average wage for Korean workers in the printing industry as a guide, along with the average number of annual vacation days granted to workers (a mere eighteen) that year (Chōsen Sōtokufu 1933, 68), we discover that probably only two or three people received a regular salary at Taedong Inswaeso. Even if printers and binders were paid on average half of what their 1931 counterparts earned, there were probably no more than a half dozen people receiving a steady salary from Taedong Inswaeso in 1923.

From Taedong Inswaeso’s 1923 bank records, we also learn something about how the company’s assets were allocated and the equipment that such companies used to create Korea’s poetic texts during this era. Appendix 3 shows Taedong Inswaeso’s assets, as listed by the Bank of Chōsen, which include sizable allocations for machines and tools, type and line blocks, as well as matrices. Taedong Inwaeso’s biggest assets, however, after unpaid capital and accounts receivable, were its land and buildings.

Printing Equipment and the Organization of Colonial Printshops

The Bank of Chōsen records provide the most detailed information we have from primary sources about the equipment used at Taedong Inswaeso, or at any of the printing facilities that printed volumes of Korean poetry during the 1920s. Although these records are limited, from them we can glean fragments of information about what kind of equipment was used at these facilities to create poetry and other literary texts. For example, we learn from the large investment in type and matrices and the inclusion of paper molds as assets that Taedong Inswaeso was most likely a letterpress shop and is likely to have had stereotyping equipment. Secondary sources help to fill in the picture. The 1969 Han’guk inswae taegam (Encyclopedia of Korean printing) confirms that Taedong Inswaeso, along with Hansŏng Tosŏ and Ch’angmunsa, was primarily a letterpress shop. According to the encyclopedia, Taedong Inswaeso had “a number of” 4.6 full-sheet letterpresses (saruk chŏnji hwalp’an kigye), as well as 5.7 full-sheet letterpresses (och’il chŏnji hwalp’an kigye) (Taehan Inswae Kongŏp Hyŏptong Chohap Yŏnhaphoe 1969, 131). The numbers 4.6 and 5.7 indicate the size of the full sheet that the press could print, (width × height)—788 × 1091 mm and 636 × 939 mm, respectively. The 5.7 paper size is also called kukp’an wŏnji and, when the sheet is folded four times, it is used to make standard kukp’an-sized printed materials (152 × 218 mm). The encyclopedia adds that Ch’angmunsa had ten 5.7 letterpresses and one 4.6 letterpress. Hansŏng Tosŏ, according to the encyclopedia, had three 5.7 letterpresses, although this is contradicted by Han Yong-sŏn, who suggests that the presses at Hansŏng Tosŏ were 4.6 letterpresses (Yi 1993, 299). Sŏn’gwang Inswae Chusik Hoesa, which printed one volume of poetry (Hwang Sŏg-u’s 1929 Chayŏnsong), had 5.7 letter-presses installed at its facility (Taehan Inswae Kongŏp Hyŏptong Chohap Yŏnhaphoe 1969, 132). The encyclopedia does not note who manufactured the presses, although we can assume that they were either made by Japanese firms or imported from other countries, as the first presses to be manufactured by Koreans did not appear until Kim Ch’ung-sin established his Songjŏn Ch’ŏlgongso (Songjŏn steelworks) in the spring of 1939 (Taehan Inswae Kongŏp Hyŏptong Chohap Yŏnhaphoe 1969, 203).

Just as we lack primary source information about the kinds of presses used at facilities such as Taedong Inswaeso, Hansŏng Tosŏ, Ch’angmunsa, and Sŏn’gwang Inswae, we do not have primary source information about how the physical space of these shops was organized. It is clear, however, that the nature of Korea’s writing systems at the time dictated an arrangement that left plenty of room for the large number of sorts needed to print in modern vernacular Korean¹³ and the distinct typesetting processes that this large number of sorts demanded. Moreover, we have rather detailed records from the colonial authority’s own printing facility, the Chōsen Sōtokufu Insatsujo, which are useful for conceptualizing how smaller commercial printing facilities may have been organized.

The large number of sorts needed to print in vernacular Korean meant that, rather than being arranged in one or two cases before which a compositor stood, the type used to print vernacular Korean materials was arranged in a long series of cases that probably stretched from the floor to a height easily reached by the compositor (see figures 2a, 2b, and 3). These cases probably ran along the walls of the composition room or were arranged into aisles.

Figures 2A and 2B.

Left: Printshop, circa 1880s. Notice the type cases in the bottom right of the photograph. Right: Printing seminar in South Korea, 1968.

Source: Taehan Inswae Kongŏp Hyŏptong Chohap Yŏnhaphoe (1969).

Figure 3.

Letterpress-composing room in P’aju, South Korea, April 2009.

Source: Photograph taken by the author.

Rather than standing before his or her case to pick type, a compositor at Hansŏng Tosŏ or a similar facility would have walked up and down the aisles of type, almost like a person searching for a book in a library.¹⁴ The large space required for the sheer mass of metal needed to print in Korean—not to mention Japanese and classical Chinese—meant that, at least at the spacious Chōsen Sōtokufu Insatsujo, there was a large space set aside for composition (Chōsen Sōtoku Kanbō Shomubu Insatsujo 1921, unnumbered page in the back matter). If space allowed, commercial printers would probably have done something similar. However, given that Hansŏng Tosŏ’s entire establishment, which included a bookstore and offices, was only about 148 p’yŏng, its composition and printing rooms were likely one and the same. By comparison, the letterpress section and accompanying office space of the Chōsen Sōtokufu Insatsujo were more than ten times as large—1,564 p’yŏng—and this does not include intaglio and lithography facilities, which were also a part of the facilities (see figure 4) (Chōsen Sōtoku Kanbō Shomubu Insatsujo 1921, 44–45).

In addition to requiring a compositor to walk around the room, the large number of sorts also meant that distributing type—returning the type pieces to their proper places after a printing job was completed—presented a considerable challenge. If not done properly, type put into incorrect compartments would cause errors when the next project was typeset. Again, no research appears to have been done on how this process took place prior to the 1920s. By the 1920s, however, printing facilities such as P’yŏnghwadang (Ch’ae Pok-ki et al. 1982, 122), and likely others, including those that printed vernacular books of poetry, were melting their type and recasting it once a project was completed, rather than distributing it. The advantage was that rather than printers walking up and down the aisles of type to put individual type pieces back into their proper places, entire compartments of sorts could be replaced.

Understanding the details of how composition took place at colonial presses and how the spaces were organized is important for the study of Korean literature and poetry from this period, because it will enable us, especially once we have conducted more in-depth studies, to better distinguish among the actors involved in creating a text. The silence of Korean literature scholars on such issues implies that an author’s writing during this period was unaffected by the setting of his or her text in type. Knowing that

Figure 4.

The government-general’s printing facility, 1921.

Source: Chōsen Sōtoku Kanbō Shomubu Insatsujo (1921, unnumbered page in the back matter).

compositors walked long aisles of sorts, picking type, makes us realize the athleticism and intellectual acuity demanded by the creative process of producing literature in colonial printing facilities. Indeed, we begin to understand that composing a page of type was an art in itself. Moreover, we also begin to appreciate that unanswered questions, such as who produced the matrices for the fonts used at these facilities, are directly linked to ideological battles over Korean identity that took place as various parties attempted to standardize the orthography of Sejong’s script in the 1920s and early 1930s (see King 2010). For adopting a new orthographic system would mean that an operation like Taedong Inswaeso would need to purchase expensive new matrices if it could not produce them itself. Valued at 4,445 wŏn in 1923, the equivalent of five and a half times what the company reported paying in wages the previous year, Taedong Inswaeso’s matrices were a significant asset. Hence, even if new orthographic standards did not require an entirely new set of matrices, orthographic change would have been an expensive proposition for printers.

Poetry’s Pressmen (Inswaein)

The 1909 Publication Law that governed nonserial publications in colonial Korea required that the name of the person in charge of printing a publication be printed in it. As a result, we can identify the specific people in charge of overseeing the printing of Korean poetry in the 1920s. It is important that we identify these men now because editions from the 1920s are quite rare and will become harder to find with the passage of time. Moreover, new editions of works from this period often do not include the original colophon information, and even the most extensive and systematic bibliographies of books of poetry from colonial Korea, such as Ha Tong-ho’s authoritative 1982 bibliography, do not include information about the printers who oversaw the creation of the books they list.

The colophons of the books surveyed emphasize that the community of people overseeing the production of vernacular books of poetry was quite small. Indeed, a single man was responsible for printing a large percentage of what is now called modern Korean poetry during the third decade of the twentieth century. No Ki-jŏng at Hansŏng Tosŏ oversaw the printing of at least eleven (and probably twelve)¹⁵ of the books surveyed here. Consequently, he is responsible for at least a quarter of the vernacular poetry titles published in the 1920s, if Ha’s suggestion that forty books of poetry were published during that decade is correct.¹⁶ Sim U-t’aek at Taedong Inswaeso printed four of the books of poetry surveyed. These two men collectively oversaw the printing of more than one-third of the books of vernacular poetry produced during the 1920s, if Ha Tong-ho’s list is accurate. If we consider the work of printers Kim Chae-sŏp, Kim Chin-ho, Kim Chung-hwan, and Kim Hyŏng-jun, we discover that six men were responsible for printing approximately two-thirds of the vernacular books of poetry. In all, just fifteen pressmen at ten printing facilities oversaw the printing of the books surveyed here (see appendix 4).

No Ki-jŏng

While we know only the names of many of those who appear in the colophons of books of vernacular poetry from this period, we have particularly detailed information about No Ki-jŏng; he ran afoul of the colonial authorities twice and they kept a close eye on him.¹⁷ According to police records, No was born on June 18, 1892, in Yŏngbyŏn-gun in North P’yŏngan Province. Police documents even record the address of the house he lived in as a child: P’arwŏn-myŏn Yong-dong 353. The eldest son in his family, No studied classical Chinese for three years during his youth and then, at the age of sixteen (17-se), enrolled at Yusin Hakkyo. At the age of twenty-two (23-se), No enrolled at Kyŏngsŏng Sarip Chunghakkyo, from which he graduated. In 1910, he traveled to Vladivostok and became a teacher at a private academy. He stayed in Russia for about four years and returned to Korea on September 24, 1914, where, for a time, he was a teacher at Sungdŏk Hakkyo. According to the colonial authority’s police records, No began “speaking and acting illegally” (Waejŏng sidae inmul saryo [n.d.] 1983, vol. 1, 217–218) in 1919.¹⁸ The records go on to say that for breaking the law No had been sentenced to six months of prison labor and was released from prison on June 27 after receiving a pardon (onsha). The records do not shed light on the specifics of the crime No committed or why he was pardoned. Nor is it clear how much time he spent in prison, because the record does not include the date he was sentenced (Waejŏng sidae inmul saryo [n.d.] 1983, vol. 1, 217–218).

In November 1922, No got in trouble with the law again, this time for printing the magazine Sinsaenghwal (The new life). A special issue celebrating the fifth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution particularly offended colonial censors, and No—along with Pak Hŭi-do, editor and publisher of Sinsaenghwal and one of the signers of the Korean Declaration of Independence in 1919—was detained and interrogated at the Sŏdaemun prison on November 20 (Kaebyŏk, December 1922, 90). Tonga ilbo reports on December 13, 1922, that Pak and others were indicted in association with what the paper termed the Sinsaengwhal pirhwa sakŏn (the Sinsaenghwal literary incident), but that No received a stay of prosecution and had been released from prison in the late afternoon the day before (Tonga ilbo, December 13, 1922). For its part in the Sinsaenghwal literary incident, Hansŏng Tosŏ had its printing equipment confiscated by the colonial authority, according to media reports of the time (Kaebyŏk, December 1922, 90). The limited scholarship on Hansŏng Tosŏ does not mention this, but if true, it would probably have been a financial blow to the company.

Whatever the situation, Hansŏng Tosŏ and No Ki-jŏng managed to weather the storm and, in January 1923, No wrote a short New Year’s wish for that month’s issue of Kaebyŏk. He had been asked what he desired in the New Year, and he responded by extolling Korea’s farmers and urging support for a movement to develop rural communities (nongch’on kyebal undong). From his short statement, we learn something about No’s personality and intellectual stance. “These days our industry is not as advanced as others, and we do not have business acumen,” No writes. “However,” he continues:

farming is a weapon that will [enable us] to live in the world; if [our farming communities] were to fail and the land be let go, what would become of the life we have lived for two thousand years? Jesus says that a person does not live on ttŏk [rice cakes] alone, that rather he lives on the word of God. However, we live on ttŏk alone.

(Kaebyŏk, January 1923, 86–87)

No goes on to ridicule intellectuals who have “spent 5–600 wŏn on an education” but cannot solve Korea’s farming problems and make better educational opportunities available to farmers.

Other details from the police report round out our sense of No as a man. We learn, for example, that No was rather wealthy, with an estate worth 5,000 yen and an annual income of 1,300 yen, and that he was married and had two daughters. Moreover, details initially recorded, no doubt, to make it easier to identify him should the authorities need to detain him again, put a human face on the printer who made so many books of vernacular Korean poetry. According to those who were surveilling him, No was short—about five feet tall—and had big eyes and a big nose; he had a mustache and light skin.

Sim U-t’aek

We know far less about the person in charge of printing the second-largest number of books of vernacular poetry in the 1920s, Sim U-t’aek. Even the Ch’ŏngsong Sim family registry (chokpo) that Sim himself printed at Taedong Inswaeso in September 1923 does not include some of the most basic information about him, such as his date of birth. Bank records tell us, though, that he was probably quite wealthy. He was a major stakeholder in the Taedong Inswaeso, holding one thousand shares in 1923, and is listed as the company’s executive director (sangmu ch’wich’e) (Nakamura 1923, 202). This would seem to confirm the assertion made in the Han’guk inswae taegam that Taedong Inswaeso was run by Sim, along with Hong Sun-p’il, Chi Song-uk, and No Ik-hyŏng, the owner of the publishing venture Pang-mun Sŏgwan (Taehan Inswae Kongŏp Hyŏptong Chohap Yŏnhaphoe 1969, 131).¹⁹ Bank records from the period list all four in management positions (Nakamura 1923, 1927, 1931, 1933, 1939).²⁰ Sim was in charge of printing a wide variety of materials; in addition to his own family registry and a number of books of poetry, Sim also printed the Chōsen Ginkō Kaisha yōroku (Records of the Bank of Chōsen) in 1923. In fact, a simple but arresting advertisement for Taedong Inswaeso appears in the back matter of that year’s publication. In contrast to No Ki-jŏng at Hansŏng Tosŏ, who is listed as a manager (chibaein), Sim may have been somewhat more removed from the fine details of the day-to-day operations of his presses and each project. This said, as the pressman in charge, he was legally liable for his shop’s output. Consequently, he is likely to have been quite involved and aware of what projects were being produced, even if he was not actually picking type or managing the workers who did.

Poetry’s Typefaces

Indicative of what printers of poetry were able to create, in spite of the many creative restraints imposed on them by the conventions of their day and the resources of their print shops, the advertisement created for the Chōsen Ginkō Kaisha yōroku at Sim U-t’aek’s shop is noteworthy because it achieves so much with so little (see figure 5). Just as a single typeface is used in the ad for Taedong Inswaeso to suggest its identity as a printing facility, Sim U-t’aek and No Ki-jŏng appear to have had a limited number of faces available to them when they created books of vernacular verse. As the advertisement for Taedong Inswaeso suggests, these printers individuated vernacular books of poetry largely by manipulating space, rather than employing a large number of different typefaces.

Figure 5.

Advertisement for Taedong Inswaeso in Chōsen Ginkō Kaisha yōroku.

Source: Nakamura (1923, unnumbered sheet after the colophon).

The Typefaces at Hansŏng Tosŏ and Taedong Inswaeso

No Ki-jŏng and Sim U-t’aek each appear to have used a standard set of fonts for the books of poetry that they produced, fonts that can be associated with the companies at which they worked.”²¹ Moreover, these fonts can be associated with the companies at which they worked. The body and title faces used by No Ki-jŏng at Hansŏng Tosŏ to print the twelve books of poetry surveyed here between 1924 and 1926 look essentially the same. Likewise, the faces used by Taedong Inswaeso to print the body and titles of the four books printed between 1923 and 1925 also look the same. This is interesting for a number of reasons. Given the expense of creating matrices for the large number of sorts needed to print in vernacular Korean, as Taedong Inswaeso’s bank records suggest, we might expect a standard typeface to have been used throughout the peninsula. In fact, the typefaces used at Hansŏng Tosŏ and Taedong Inswaeso may be two of a small number in use during this period, although this is not my impression. However, if important printers and publishers had their own distinct matrices, they probably saw value in investing in aesthetically distinguishing themselves from their competitors.

The continued use of distinct typefaces at Hansŏng Tosŏ and Taedong Inswaeso also suggests that No Ki-jŏng or Sim U-t’aek had essentially no creative freedom when it came to selecting a typeface. This does not mean, however, that we should abandon Bringhurst’s analogy of men like No and Sim as musicians of a sort, for different projects, as well as the type and machines themselves, always presented creative challenges. This is attested to by Sim Kyu-t’aekS22 a printer at Munhaedang Inswaeso in the late 1930s. Writing in 1937 to promote a new system of typecasting that he was developing, and perhaps, as a consequence, overstating his case, Sim Kyu-t’aek describes how, even as late as 1937, inconsistencies in typecasting frequently meant that printers not only had to “get creative” and mix different sizes of metal type, but often had to use wooden type as well in order to complete a job (Sim Kyu-t’aek 1937, 1). Moreover, while there is general uniformity in the typefaces used at Taedong Inswaeso and Hansong Tosŏ, variations between individual glyphs are quite common.

What might be termed the title face²³ that No Ki-jŏng worked with at Hansŏng Tosŏ is identified by the modulation of the strokes that make up its kidung, or stems—the vertical axis of the ppich’im in such letters as kiyŏk in ki , the vertical axis of the kkokchi in letters such as ch’iŭt , the lengthy modulated ppich’im in siot and chiŭt , and a relative lack of serifs or square terminals in kyŏp’ kyŏt chulgi and kyŏt chulgi (see figure 6 for a description of these typographic terms). Moreover, with the exception of Kim So-wŏl’s Chindallaekkot and Cho Myŏng-hŭi’s Pom chandŭi pat wi e (On spring grass), in each book from the 1920s examined in the survey upon which this article is based, the title case is 4 ho, or 13.75 points. The title case in both Chindallaekkot and Pom chandŭi pat wi e is 2 ho, or 21 points.²⁴

Figure 6.

Elements of Korean typefaces.

Source: Han (2000, 46). Note: I have slightly modified Professor Han’s diagram. In addition to transliterating the Korean terms and correcting a spelling error, I also added the term “ch’ich’im ” at the suggestion of Pak Pyŏng-ch’ŏn, a noted calligrapher and historian of Korean typography (Pak Pyŏng-ch’ŏn, personal interview, March 19, 2010).

The body face in the Hansŏng Tosŏ poetry titles made by No Ki-jŏng is characterized by less modulation in the strokes that make up its kidung, the oblique axis of ppich’im in letters such as kiyŏk in ki , short and relatively unmodulated ppich’im in siot and chiŭt , and brush-formed terminals or serifs. The size of the typeface, like that of the title face, is remarkably consistent. The body text in every book of vernacular poetry printed by No Ki-jŏng at Hansŏng Tosŏ in the 1920s is 5 ho, or 10.5 points.

Many aspects of the title and body faces of Hansŏng Tosŏ are also found in the faces used by Sim U-t’aek at Taedong Inswaeso. Like the books printed at Hansŏng Tosŏ, those printed at Taedong Inswaeso use two distinct faces to distinguish titles from body text, which are generally the same size—3 ho and 5 ho, respectively.²⁵ However, the distinction between these two faces is much finer in books produced by Taedong Inswaeso than in those produced at Hansŏng Tosŏ. Indeed, some syllables in Taedong Inswaeso’s title face look identical to those found in the body face. In general, the faces used at Taedong Inswaeso can be distinguished from those found in books printed at Hansŏng Tosŏ by the weight of the strokes in both the title and body face. The strokes of stems and chulgi tend to be thinner than in Hansŏng Tosŏ faces. Also, the stroke of a Taedong Inswaeso title face tends to be less modulated than a Hansŏng Tosŏ title face. For example, the distinctive wide stroke of Hansŏng Tosŏ’s title face, which tapers dramatically toward its lower terminals, contrasts with the less dramatic modulation of line in the Taedong Inswaeso title face. In contrast, the stroke in the Taedong Inswaeso body face tends to be more modulated and the oblique axis of stokes more pronounced than in Hansŏng Tosŏ’s body face. See, for example, the difference between the weight and axis of the strokes in tang in Nae hon i pul t’al ttae (When my spirit burns, Hansŏng Tosŏ, 1928, 27) and Hŭkpang pigok (Secret songs from a dark room, Taedong Inswaeso, 1924, 22) (see figures 7a and 7b). The ppich’im of siot and chiŭt also tend to be longer.

Although No Ki-jŏng and Sim U-t’aek seem to have always used the same typefaces when printing books of poetry in the 1920s, other typefaces were used by subsequent or different printers at both Hansŏng Tosŏ and Taedong Inswaeso. For example, when Kim Chae-sŏp printed No Cha-yŏng’s Ch’ŏnyŏ ŭi hwahwan (A girl’s flower garland) at Hansŏng Tosŏ in 1929, he used a typeface that, while not the same, resembled the typefaces in use at Taedong Inswaeso. Also, when Kwŏn Chung-hyŏp printed Yi Hag-in’s Mugunghwa (Mugunghwa) in 1925 at Taedong Inswaeso, he used typefaces rather different from those used by Sim U-t’aek. Of course, decorative typefaces were also employed for book covers and title pages by both companies, as were roman and Japanese typefaces, when the occasion called for them. These other typefaces are important to study to learn more about the two most important printers of poetry in 1920s Korea and the aesthetic stance of each volume. However, the title and body faces used by No Ki-jŏng at Hansŏng Tosŏ and Sim U-t’aek at Taedong Inswaeso between 1923 and 1926 establish an aesthetic rhythm so characteristic that even before one checks the colophon of a book, it is often easy to identify volumes as the work of one of these two men, simply by looking at the type. A description of these type-faces seemed the most efficient way to begin a discussion of type in colonial Korea, a discussion long overdue given the importance of print media to the culture of the Korean peninsula during this period. To date, there appears to be essentially no scholarship on the topic.

Figures 7A and 7B.

Type Comparison—tang.

See the photo essay “Dance of Anguish: Poetic Texts from 1920s Korea” in the December 2013 online issue of Cross-Currents for additional type samples from Hansŏng Tosŏ Inswaeso and Taedong Inswaeso.

Toward a Conclusion—The Poetic Page in 1920s Korea

To begin to investigate the sociology of Korean literary texts, especially the unstudied techne of their production, this article has focused on identifying and describing the organizations, people, and technologies employed to create Korean poetry in the 1920s. By way of conclusion, I wish to suggest briefly how this investigation can also expand the horizons of our critical approaches to individual books and poems by discussing the creative visual spaces orchestrated by Korean pressmen and poets in the 1920s. I focus here on two versions of Kim So-wŏl’s poem “Pandal” as it appears in the two alternate issues of the first edition of Chindallaekkot, published, according to its colophons, in 1925.

In 2010, critic and literary historian Kwŏn Yŏng-min announced that an alternate issue of the first edition of Kim So-wŏl’s canonical Chindallaekkot had been discovered. This pronouncement was greeted with a great deal of interest because of Kim’s central position in Korea’s twentieth-century literary canon and because the discovery raises so many questions. Why were two versions created by Kim So-wŏl, who is listed as the person in charge of publishing Chindallaekkot, and No Ki-jŏng, who is listed as the pressman in charge of the publication? Why are they presented with different covers and title pages? Why are they made with alternate kinds of paper? What should be made of the subtle textual differences between the two presentations (see figures 8–11)? Which of the texts should be considered authoritative? Many of these remain open questions.²⁶ To emphasize the ways that knowledge of the sociology of Korean texts should inform hermeneutical literary praxis, I would like to discuss just one of the many differences between the texts: the alternate visual presentations of “Pandal” in the two versions.

“Pandal” appears on page 84 of both collections. Typical of Kim’s poetry, the emotional stance of the speaker in “Pandal” is one of rueful contemplation. As a half moon rises, the speaker, longing for a lost love, expresses grief with conceits that suggest collapse. The emotional descent of the speaker is articulated through juxtaposition with elements of the natural environment that propose elevation. The poem pivots in the third stanza, when the speaker acknowledges his loss and concludes with a simile that aligns the emotional decline of the speaker with the leaves on a dark plain that seem to fall like flowers.

Half Moon

It wanders white and clean. When did the dim half moonclimb over the sky!A wind rises. Evening is cold.The sun there plainly on the white shore.A raven-dark, grassless plain flowsover a chill fog.Ah, it was the deep of winter. And in methis sorrow that crumbles my heart!Leaving, you take even the love in my chest as you go.Youth turns into a vale of years.Night-dark branches of the plain’s brambles    only their leaves—pale in the twilight—like flowers seeming to fall.²⁷

The important typographic differences between the poems in the two issues of Chindallaekkot appear in the final line. In what has come to be called the Hansŏng Tosŏ issue (see figure 12) the final line is placed the equivalent of one syllable space down the page relative to the rest of the lines in the poem. In addition, the word “flowers,” which would have been impressed by a single piece of type, is printed upside down. In a manner typical of Kim So-wŏl’s recognized attention to the fine details of his poetry’s presentation,²⁸ the final line of “Pandal” announces that flowers seem to fall, and the line itself seems to drop down the page. Not only is the semantic sense of the final line enacted by the bibliographic codes that make up the poem, but one of its central images is as well. The last line of the second stanza describes the poem’s pathos as a “sorrow that crumbles my heart,” and we find in the last line of the poem the idea of collapse when that line shifts down the page with its flowers.

In the Chungang Sŏrim issue, the final line of the poem is justified toward the top of the page with the other lines in the poem, and the word “flowers” is printed right side up (see figure 12). Consequently, while maintaining the typographic expectations of the day, the bibliographic codes of the poem do not so obviously perform the semantic content of the final line.

Asking which version of these poems is “correct” leads to the recognition that the sociology of Kim’s text should play an important role in informing interpretive practices. Although there is no defensible answer to the question of which text should be considered authoritative, the manner in which the books cite textual practice in Seoul just before Christmas 1925 is clear. So, too, is the need to better understand these practices so that they can inform our interpretative procedures. The more “visible” role played by the bibliographic codes in the Hansŏng Tosŏ version of the poem serve to highlight the obvious, if less “visible,” role these same codes play in the Chungang Sorim issue. Asserting that one version of these poems is correct

Figure 8.

The covers of the Hansŏng Tosŏ issue (left, in the Appenzeller-Noble Memorial Museum) and the Chungang Sŏrim issue (right, in the Han’guk Hyŏndaesi Pangmulgwan [Museum of Contemporary Korean Poetry]).

Figure 9.

Spine of the Hansŏng Tosŏ issue (vertical) and the Chungang Sŏrim issue (horizontal).

Sources: Images of the Hansŏng Tosŏ issue are from the Hwabong Mun’go (far left) and Appenzeller-Noble Memorial Museum collections (right). Image of the Chungang Sŏrim issue is from the collection of Ch’oe Ch’ŏr-hwan.

Figure 10.

Title pages of the Hansŏng Tosŏ issue (left) and the Chungang Sŏrim issue (right).

Sources: Image of the Hansŏng Tosŏ issue title page is from the Ŏm Tong-sŏp collection and the Chungang Sŏrim issue is from the Han’guk Hyŏndaesi Pangmulgwan.

Figure 11.

The colophons of the Hansŏng Tosŏ issue (left) and the Chungang Sŏrim issue (right) in the Appenzeller-Noble Memorial Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Korean Poetry (Han’guk Hyŏndaesi Pangmulgwan), respectively.

Figure 12.

“Pandal” in the Hansŏng Tosŏ issue of Chindallaekkot (from the collection of the Appenzeller-Noble Memorial Museum) (left) and “Pandal” in the Chungang Sŏrim issue (from the collection of Ch’oe Ch’ŏr-hwan).

would have us choose between the semblance of typographic standards that we imagine No Ki-jŏng at Hansŏng Tosŏ to have followed and the uncanny poetry of texts by Kim So-wŏl, which, with often startling precision, manipulate these standards for their own artistic ends. How these various forces are conjoined in the various iterations of Chindallaekkot is how Chindallaekkot mattered in the 1920s, a realization missed by critical approaches that do not make room for the sociology of Korea’s literary artifacts.

Studying the books fashioned by poets such as Kim So-wŏl²⁹ and press-men like No, it becomes clear that the poetic pages they crafted are unique spaces fashioned for the poems they present. The layout of every book of vernacular poetry produced in 1920s Korea is designed differently, making the pages like snowflakes: with the possible exception of Kim Ki-jin’s 1925 collection of translations, Aeryŏn mosa (Yearning thoughts of love), and Pak Chong-hwa’s 1924 Hŭkpang pigok, the layouts of no two are the same.³⁰ Many of the differences are subtle. The layout of Kim Ŏk’s Haep’ari ŭi norae (Song of the jellyfish) and the second edition of his Onoe ŭi mudo (Dance of) are nearly identical. In fact, the two books were printed within months of each other (June and August, respectively) by Sim U-t’aek at Taedong Inswaeso on what looks like the same paper stock with the same typefaces. Even the margins around the poems are quite similar. Yet the books “feel” different when you open them, even before you begin reading. This is because Kim Ŏk and Sim U-t’aek decided to shift the position of the folios. In Haep’ari ŭi norae, they are placed on the outside margin, off the bottom of the page. In the 1923 edition of Onoe ŭi mudo, the folios are near the bottom of the page and closer to the gutter. As a result, the two page layouts are balanced differently. (See Cross-Currents photo essay “Dance of Anguish: Poetic Texts from 1920s’ Korea” for additional type samples from Hansŏng Tosŏ Inswaeso and Taedong Inswaeso.)

In contrast, the differences between the layout found in the first edition of No Cha-yŏng’s Ch’ŏnyŏ ŭi hwahwan and that found in Kim Ŏk’s translation of Rabindranath Tagore’s The Gardener, Wŏnjŏng, are quite stark. Both books were printed by No Ki-jŏng at Hansŏng Tosŏ within months of each other (October and December 1924, respectively) using the same typefaces. And yet the poems were laid out quite differently on the page. The short lines of No Cha-yŏng’s poems caused the printer, No Ki-jŏng, to increase the top margin, so the poems sit lower on the page. In fact, all the margins are quite generous. Moreover, the position of the running heads and folios creates a rectangular grid that frames the poems. The long prose lines of Tagore’s poems, alternately, led No Ki-jŏng to shrink the top and bottom margins so the lines could stretch farther down the page. Moreover, he centered the running head over the text block and positioned the folios directly beneath it to encourage the eyes to travel down the page, following the long length of each line.

Curator and graphic designer Ellen Lupton writes that the grids designers have used to lay out their pages have evolved across centuries and can be “carefully honed intellectual devices, infused with ideology and ambition, … the inescapable mesh that filters, at some level of resolution, nearly every system of writing and reproduction” (2004, 113). To understand the ambitions and ideology that might be infused into each of the layouts presented in these books of poetry will take a great deal more research. We need to learn more about the men, in addition to No Ki-jŏng and Sim U-t’aek, who printed these books, as well as about their print shops. What is clear, however, is that the page itself was used as a creative space in 1920s Korea by poets and their printers. This is quite remarkable when we consider the limitations imposed by standard sets of fonts, two standard-sized presses, and the fact that a high percentage of books were printed at the same facilities by the same people. There is every reason to expect that a great many of these pages would have been laid out in exactly the same fashion.

Or perhaps it was inevitable that they would all become different. Given all the constraints but faced with the distinct shape of each poet’s work, maybe the desire of poets and printers to express themselves led to the path of least resistance. Ideas naturally came to be expressed spatially instead of by historical analogy, as might be done in a Western print shop today by selecting a typeface such as Garamond, which cannot escape its past, or Helvetica, which we cannot escape in our present. Either way, we see, quite literally, that the space on the page was important to poets and printers in colonial Korea during the 1920s. To ignore this is to ignore the clear role played by organizations such as Hansŏng Tosŏ and individuals like No Ki-jŏng in creating these poetic spaces. To read only for the linguistic composition of an imagined original created by a writer we admire is, to employ Bringhurst’s analogy about authors and typographers again, to silence the music performed by pressmen such as No Ki-jŏng with the historical manuscripts, lost now for the most part, that Korea’s poets of the early twentieth century conveyed to them. We can now read Korea’s literature with a broader spectrum of interests, with a keener sense of curiosity about the historical context of our texts, and with an inquisitiveness that will enable us to see with significantly more clarity all of the faces that present Korea’s literature to us.