Traditional Craft
A Paper That Takes a Hundred Hands
April 20, 2026 — By Joseon Yangban
Traditional Craft
A Paper That Takes
a Hundred Hands
The Legacy
Silk lasts five hundred years.
Paper lasts a thousand.
Most paper is made to be used and forgotten. Hanji was made to last. Korea's traditional handmade paper, crafted from paper mulberry bark, has been preserving words, art, and memory for over a millennium.
How many hands does it take to make a single sheet of paper? In Korean tradition, it is said that the maker's hands touch it ninety-nine times — and the person who first unfolds it completes the hundredth touch. That is why hanji is sometimes called baekji (百紙) — while it is called baekji (白紙) because it is white paper, it is truly the paper of a hundred hands. Every sheet carries the weight of that labor.
The World Takes Notice
Why the Louvre Chose Hanji
Today, that reputation has found a new stage. Italy's National Central Institute for the Pathology of Books and Documentation (ICPAL) has officially certified hanji as a material suitable for cultural heritage restoration — a recognition that has opened doors across Europe.
The Louvre used hanji to restore one of its prized pieces, the Bureau de Maximilien de Bavière, a desk once belonging to Maximilian II of Bavaria. For decades, the world's leading museums had relied almost exclusively on Japanese washi for restoring wooden artifacts. Hanji earned its place through performance: as one French Ministry of Culture conservator put it, it excelled in adhesion, weight, strength, and above all, dimensional stability.
Closer to home, hanji's endurance is demonstrated by the Mugujeonggwang Great Dharani Sutra, Korea's oldest known woodblock print, believed to have been produced over 1,300 years ago. While most paper of that age would crumble at a touch, this scroll survives — because of what it was printed on.
The Mugujeonggwang Great Dharani Sutra, the world's oldest surviving woodblock print.
Source: JoongAng Ilbo
Goesan, North Chungcheong
The Artisan's Dedication
In Goesan, North Chungcheong Province, Ahn Chi-yong operates Sinpung Hanji, where he carries forward the tradition of hanji-making as a National Intangible Cultural Heritage artisan. At a time when many hanji makers import their raw materials, he grows his own paper mulberry on-site, drawing on Goesan's clean mountain water to produce hanji the traditional way, from seed to sheet.
For him, hanji was never a career choice — it was simply the world he grew up in. He recalls a time when hanji-making belonged to everyone. When every home had a wood-fired hearth, neighbors would gather to steam the mulberry bark and make paper together.
Industrialization changed all of that. As apartment living replaced traditional homes, the hearths disappeared — and with them, the knowledge and the people who held it.
That memory now lives in Ahn's workshop. He has kept one corner of it exactly as it once was: a traditional hearth, a basin fed by water running down from the mountain. He simply wants people to see it, at least in one place, before it is gone entirely.
Baekji, The Paper of a Hundred Hands
While it is also called baekji (白紙) because it is white paper, the name carries a deeper meaning: to make a single sheet of paper, the maker's hands touch it ninety-nine times, and the user's hands complete the hundredth touch. This is why hanji is also called baekji (百紙), using the character for "hundred" (百) — the paper of a hundred hands.
Traditional Craftsmanship
Glimpses into the Craft
The most essential material for making hanji is the paper mulberry tree. Hanji is made from just four things: paper mulberry bark, hwangchogyu (a plant whose mucilaginous roots bind the fibers together), clean water, and a craftsperson who knows what to do with them.
The paper mulberry used in hanji grows through Korea's four distinct seasons, enduring bitter winters and humid summers alike. That resilience is carried into the fibers themselves. Hanji is not simply paper. It is something Korea's climate, land, and people made together.
The resilient paper mulberry tree, which endures Korea's four seasons, is the most important ingredient in making hanji
Part 1
Preparation
Preparing ingredients
Part 2
Papermaking (Muljil)
Traditional Hanji Papermaking (Muljil)
The Atmosphere
Workshop Atmosphere
Beside his workshop, Ahn Chi-yong runs a hands-on hanji-making space, open to visitors. As mass-produced paper has driven down demand for the traditional kind, he has come to believe that the only way to keep hanji alive is to grow the people who will one day want to use it. If a child knows what hanji is — if they have held it and made it — then when the moment comes to put something important into the world, they might reach for paper that will last.
Keeping It Alive
"A name only survives
if it's written on hanji."
"Putting sincere effort even into a single sheet of paper"
There is a Korean proverb: a tiger leaves behind its skin, a person leaves behind their name. Ahn adds his own coda: that name only truly survives if it is written on hanji.
In an age of e-books and digital print, people still seek out physical books, still turn pages, still find something warm in ink on paper. That warmth, hanji can hold for centuries. It seems only a matter of time before the world remembers that.
Joseon Yangban Series 05 / Hanji — A Paper That Takes a Hundred Hands.
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