An Ancient Art, A Technological Revolution Printing has always
been intimately connected with advances in technology. The
Chinese are credited with the invention of moveable type (Bi
Sheng invented the use of clay type in 1041), but the number of
characters used in the complex Chinese pictographic writing
system made the process impractical. The Koreans developed a
phonetic writing system which was better suited to the use of
the movable type printing press, which Chwe Yun-Ui invented in
1234 during the Goryeo Dynasty, an ancient Korean nation. In
Western European tradition, Johann Gutenberg is credited with
the invention of the movable type printing press, sparking a
cultural revolution through the spread of ideas.