The Tripitaka Koreana Is Carved on 80,000 Woodblocks
An entire Buddhist canon cut into wood, twice, to save a kingdom under Mongol attack
Quick facts
- Woodblocks carved
- c. 80,000
- Second edition carved
- 1237-1248 CE
- First edition destroyed by
- Mongol invasion, 1232 CE
- Storage site
- Haeinsa Temple, Janggyeong Panjeon (15th century)
What happened
The Tripitaka Koreana is the most complete surviving collection of Buddhist scripture engraved on woodblocks, carved onto some 80,000 individual blocks between 1237 and 1248 CE. This was in fact the second such project: an earlier set had been carved starting in 1011 CE as an appeal for divine protection during a Khitan invasion, and that first set was destroyed when the Mongols burned it in 1232 CE during their invasions of Goryeo. The kingdom responded by recarving the entire canon a second time. The completed woodblocks are housed at Haeinsa temple on Mount Gaya, in storage buildings called Janggyeong Panjeon dating to the 15th century, which UNESCO credits with astonishing mastery of the conservation techniques that have kept 80,000 wooden printing blocks intact for nearly 800 years.
Why it matters
The Tripitaka Koreana is both a religious and a technical monument: it demonstrates Goryeo's mastery of large-scale woodblock printing a full century before the kingdom would go a step further and invent movable metal type, and its survival through repeated invasion shows how central Buddhist patronage was to Goryeo royal identity.
How we know
The 80,000 surviving woodblocks are physically extant and housed at Haeinsa temple, where they have been studied, catalogued, and dated by Korean scholars and conservators; UNESCO's own inspection and inscription process independently verified the age and completeness of the collection.
Sources
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Haeinsa Temple Janggyeong Panjeon, the Depositories for the Tripitaka Koreana Woodblocks · Primary source (author-declared)whc.unesco.org · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Goryeo · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Related timelines
- The Mongol Empire → · The Mongol invasions that destroyed the first Tripitaka woodblocks in 1232 were part of the same campaigns that made Goryeo a Mongol vassal state; see the Mongol Empire timeline for the wider Mongol conquest of East Asia.