Carving of the Tripitaka Koreana

Timeline

1. 1001–1010Gaeseong · GoryeoAmid repeated Khitan invasions from the north, the Goryeo court began carving the Tripitaka to pray for national peace and accumulate merit, collecting canonical texts and organizing scribes and woodblock carvers.
2. 1011–1031Gaeseong · GoryeoThe first edition took about twenty years to complete, collated against the Song-dynasty printed Tripitaka; the blocks were stored in temples such as Gayasan in Gaeseong and later destroyed in the Mongol wars.
3. 1236–1251Haeinsa · GoryeoAfter the Mongol invasion burned the first-edition blocks, the court recarved 81,340 wooden blocks at Haeinsa; the blocks remain preserved to this day as the world's most complete surviving ancient woodblock-printed Tripitaka.