Juche

    In Mt Myohyang, the famous mountain of the DPRK there is a storage equipped with the up-to-date facilities for the 80 000 Blocks of the Complete Collection of Buddhist Scriptures under the wise leadership of President Kim Il Sung, thus preserving the 80 000 Blocks of the Complete Collection of Buddhist Scriptures without any faults.

    President Kim Il Sung said.

    “This collection is a priceless relic of our country and a national treasure.”

    The 80 000 Blocks of the Complete Collection of Buddhist Scriptures printed from wooden blocks is a library of Buddhist scriptures and Buddhism related books of Koryo.

    The work of publishing the complete collection of Buddhist scriptures in Koryo started in 1011 and the first complete collection of Buddhist scriptures were woodcut and printed in over 6 000 volumes for about 70 years until 1087.

    Afterward in the latter half of the 12^th century 4 769 volumes of the complete collection of Buddhist scriptures in 1 000 kinds were woodcut and supplemented for the second time but those wood blocks were burnt away in 1231 when the Mongolians invaded.

    Koryo started the publishing of the complete collection of Buddhist scriptures for the third time from 1236 and it finished in 1251.

    At this time the amount of the printed complete collection of Buddhist scriptures were 6 793 volumes in 1 539 kinds and the amount of the wood blocks were more than 80 000.

    This is the oldest and most perfect one in the world known as the 80 000 Blocks of the Complete Collection of Buddhist Scriptures (the Koryo Tripitaka).

    The wood blocks of the 80 000 Blocks of the Complete Collection of Buddhist Scriptures are made of Machilus thunbergii, white birch and birch. Each woodcut is 69.6cm long and 24cm wide and 3.7cm thick. On each block there engraved 22 lines and there are 14 letters on each line. Four corners of a woodcut were banded with bronze strips fixed with nails and wooden bars were attached to both ends to prevent it from getting twisted. The surface of the block was varnished to prevent it from rotting and becoming wormy for a long time.

    The wood blocks of the 80 000 Blocks of the Complete Collection of Buddhist Scriptures are housed in Haein Temple in Mt Kaya in Hapchon County, South Kyongsang Province. One set of the printed books is kept in Pohyon Temple at Mt Myohyang in Hyangsan County, North Phyongan Province.

    The National Classic Research Institute of the Academy of Social Sciences compiled a 25-volume bibliographical introduction to the Complete Collection of Buddhist Scriptures in 1988.

    The 80 000 Blocks of the Complete Collection of Buddhist Scriptures of Koryo has the best value in history of publication culture among those introduced so far.

    The 80 000 Blocks of the Complete Collection of Buddhist Scriptures consist mainly of the contents absolutizing Buddhism like the Buddhist doctrines and its explanatory papers, the biographies of the Buddhist priests famous for spreading Buddhism. The 80 000 Blocks of the Complete Collection of Buddhist Scriptures has become a model that everyone, home and abroad, approves and a treasure of the human culture for its perfection and eternity of the printed ones and the elaborateness of the wood blocks which are unprecedented in the world publishing culture showing the publishing and printing techniques of our ancestors.

    The 80 000 Blocks of the Complete Collection of Buddhist Scriptures, the historical and cultural remains, are finely exhibited in the storage of Mt Myohyang History Museum under the careful guidance of President Kim Il Sung.

    In June 1989 President Kim Il Sung visited the Mt Myohyang History Museum and asked why they exhibited only two volumes of the printed ones of the 80 000 Blocks of the Complete Collection of Buddhist Scriptures.

    One of the officials said they had kept the other ones in other place as they paid attention more to preserving them for a long time than to showing them to the people.

    The President said that it was better to show all of them because, when they exhibited only 2 volumes, the people would not believe that there are 80 000 Blocks of the Complete Collection of Buddhist Scriptures. He continued to say that they could preserve them for a long time if they kept them in a bookshelf made of thick glasses filling the bookshelf with argon gas and sealing it up. He also said that the current building was suitable for storing the 80 000 Blocks of the Complete Collection of Buddhist Scriptures. He also took measures to arrange wonderfully the exhibition room drawing its ground plan personally.

    The 80 000 Blocks of the Complete Collection of Buddhist Scriptures whose existence might have been disregarded in a dark storage for a long time are boasting itself as a treasure of the nation by being exhibited in the room equipped with glass boxes under the warm care of President Kim Il Sung.