Soldiers looking for land mines in South Korea have found the country’s oldest gun, a 600-year-old inscribed bronze tube used to fire gunpowder-propelled arrows

In November 2023, troops sweeping for a suspected minefield on Mount Geumseong in southwestern South Korea ended up uncovering a small bronze object about four inches beneath the soil. Rather than a landmine, it was a gun, one that may have been buried for more than 600 years, according to a report by Smithsonian Magazine.After nearly three years of analysis, researchers with the Naju National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage have identified the object as a Hwangja Hwatong, an early handheld gunpowder weapon. Also called the “fire tube”, it is a ten-inch bronze instrument dating back to the 14th or 15th century. The weapon has three main sections: a socket that would hold a wooden handle, a gunpowder chamber, and a muzzle from which the projectile would be released. According to researchers, the weapon likely discharged arrows or other projectiles.

An archaeological miracle

The weapon weighs a little more than two pounds and is carved with 28 Korean characters. Twenty-seven appear in six columns on the handle socket, recording its name, weight, manufacturing supervisor, craftsman, and an incomplete date. A separate character on the muzzle, 八, meaning “eight,” may have served as an inventory or production number. The Heritage Service translates them to read: “In the 12th month of the Jeongsa year, the Hwangja Hwatong was made. Its weight is one geun and 14 nyang. Supervised by Noksa An Hyu-bo; made by the artisan Seok.”“This is an extraordinary discovery with immense academic, historical and cultural value,” Cho Mi-soon, director of the Naju National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage, said at a recent press event, per the Korea Times. “It comes from a crucial transitional period between the late Goryeo and early Joseon dynasties, when physical artefacts of firearms are exceptionally rare.”According to the agency’s statement, “Hwangja” is a class designation; “geun” and “nyang” are traditional units of weight; and “Noksa” is the title of the official who oversaw the gun’s creation. As for the date: Koreans used to measure time in 60-year cycles, and the 57th year in each sexagenary cycle was the Jeongsa year. So researchers analysing the hwatong determined that it was made in 1377 or 1437.Either would be significant. In 1377, near the end of the Goryeo Dynasty, military official and inventor Choe Mu-seon persuaded the government to establish the Hwatong Dogam, an agency devoted to producing gunpowder weapons. If the cannon dates to that year, it could be a surviving object from the very beginning of state-organised firearm production in Korea. The alternative, 1437, places it under King Sejong the Great, when Korean engineers were actively improving firearms. Korean weapons makers standardised new firearm designs several years later, in 1445.However, the CT scans revealed a rounded powder chamber unlike later Sejong-era firearms, which incorporated wooden wads to transfer more of the gunpowder’s force into the projectile. Its simpler construction therefore resembles an earlier stage of firearm engineering.Metallurgical analysis showed that the cannon makers cast it from copper, tin, and lead, keeping the tin content below 10% of the alloy. Microscopy also revealed traces left by casting and impurities characteristic of the rather poor refining methods from that era. Researchers found no identifiable gunpowder residue inside the chamber.As for why the hwatong was found lying on the ground on Geumseongsan Mountain? It might have been used by Koreans defending their land. Eo Changsun, head of academic research at the Naju National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage, told the Chosun Daily’s Heo Yun-hee that Japanese pirates once sailed up the Yeongsan River to plunder and the mountain was a geographical stronghold against them. The mountain is near the Yeongsan River region, which has historically served as an important area in terms of military strategy. The summit, for instance, has been used by the military as an air-defence station since 1966.

The oldest weapon

“Either way, it is the earliest gunpowder weapon found in Korea,” per the Heritage Service. Gunpowder, which is essentially a mixture of sulfur, potassium nitrate and charcoal, was invented by Daoist alchemists in ninth-century China. The monks were trying to create an elixir of life, but what they made became an instrument of death. Black powder was initially used only in fireworks and signals. In the tenth century, though, Chinese inventors packed it into projectiles in bamboo tubes, creating early, short-range guns. By the late 1200s, these guns were metal, and the technology had spread.Previously, the earliest nationally designated Korean firearm with a securely inscribed manufacturing year was a Cheonja Chongtong from 1555, according to reporting by Kyunghyang Shinmun. If the Hwangja Hwatong dates to 1437, it pushes that physical record back 118 years. If it was made in 1377, the gap grows to 178 years.Kyung Hee University Museum currently houses two other apparently early small cannons, but because no one recorded their original findspots, researchers cannot date them securely. The newly discovered weapon now gives archaeologists a well-documented point of comparison.Lee Sang-hoon, the former deputy director of the Korea Army Museum, told the Chosun Daily that the artefact fills a gap in the country’s firearm-development history. Per the Heritage Service statement, “Physical examples of gunpowder weapons from the late Goryeo and early Joseon periods are also exceedingly rare, making it highly valuable in terms of heritage.”