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NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WORLD WRITING SYSTEMS

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Permanent ExhibitionPermanent Exhibition

Civilization and Writing :
A Great Journey

"The Great Journey of Writing and Civilization"
The permanent exhibition sheds light on the world's writing systems, cultures, and civilizations from a comparative cultural perspective. Through exhibits based on storytelling, it examines the development and spread of writing from its inception and reinterprets written content in collaboration with various artists across different fields.
Online Museum VR

Prologue

A Great Invention
Humanity had speech and sound.
In the prehistoric era without writing, humans conveyed thoughts and emotions through gestures and expressions accompanying speech.
However, as soon as words were spoken, they disappeared, limited by time and space. Humanity, in need of communication, wanted to overcome these barriers.
The invention that arose from this longing was writing, allowing words and sounds to be recorded.
Thoughts and emotions previously conveyed orally were now contained in written symbols, which did not disappear with the passage of time or changing of space.
The immortal desire for communication was thus recorded and reproduced through writing,
and humanity was able to expand its scope of communication.
The era of history unfolded for humanity.

Part 1

Writing Systems to Build a Road
Writing Systems to Build a Roads Writing is humanity's greatest invention.
Surprisingly, scattered throughout the world, humanity has created or adopted its own writing systems suited to
particular environments, with only time separating them.
Based on this great invention, humanity has founded brilliant paths of culture and civilization.
Along with the rise and fall of culture, writing has been created and destroyed constantly.
Writing systems that could not adapt to changing environments disappeared, and new systems took their place.
Some writing systems had particularly strong communicative power, spreading to other regions.
Cultural competence or strong vitality helped a few writing systems spread further.
Sometimes, political relationships of domination and subjugation or religious beliefs heightened
communicative power. Trade also spurred the spread of writing.
As a result, Europe adopted Latin script, Southwest Asia adopted Arabic script, India adopted Devanagari-based scripts, and East Asia adopted Chinese characters and Hangul.
Historically, humans have used over 400 writing systems, but currently, only about 30 are in use.
In the timeline of ancient writing systems, Hangul was created relatively recently, but it still maintains its vitality.
It is a highly original writing system and a foundation of Korean culture.

Part 2

Writing System to Create Culture
All human cultures and civilizations were built on a foundation of writing systems.
The power of writing has been tremendous in the process of creation and destruction.
Writing has shown itself to be a great force that brings old eras to an end and calls forth new ones.
Humanity brought forth a communication revolution with writing and used it as a foundation to
constantly reform social systems. The most brilliant communication revolution of humanity began with
the popularization of writing based on printing technology. Books could be reproduced infinitely with the invention of the printing press.
As books became closer to people, they were increasingly translated and recorded.
There could no longer be a minority of authority and privilege.
The hidden force that supported civilization was paper.
The increasing demand for books had to be met by paper alone.
Improvements in fonts were also made to contain as much information as possible on limited surfaces and make
it easy for people to read books. Printing led to the popularization of human knowledge,
translation led to its spread and sharing, and recording led to its transmission.
Media and fonts reflect the technology of an era and drive the present and future of writing.

Epilogue

Epilogue

Writing System of Tomorrow
Room of Quiet Contemplation

The rapid development of information and communication technology has opened up a new era of transformation.
The way knowledge is shared through writing has also undergone significant changes.
At the center of this transformation is the digital medium, which has changed the way knowledge is stored and transmitted.
It has shaken up the book-based writing systems that previously relied on printing and paper.
The digital world has expanded the realm of writing to include images, video, audio, and even emojis.
It is a paradox of history that, while humanity once moved from pictures to writing, it is now moving back to pictures with the emergence of new pictographic writing systems.
The linguistic and writing barriers arising from race, region, and history are rapidly breaking down thanks to digital technology. Artificial intelligence-based machine translation technology that can acquire infinite knowledge is enclosing humanity within a single fence.
However, writing that cannot adapt to the technological age will disappear. Perhaps a new "world script" that all of humanity will use will emerge.