In the Joseon Dynasty, the last dynastic kingdom of Korea, there was a custom among the noble families. The family would put the book called ‘Cheon-In-Cheon-Ja-Mun 千人千字文’ on the main feast table when their son celebrated his first birthday. The name of the book means “Each of 1,000 people write one character.” As the name suggests, this book comprises Chinese characters written by 1,000 people.
When a son was born into a noble family, his father would visit officials who had accumulated academic literacy through examinations and ask each of them to write down one character from the Cheon-Ja-Mun 千字文 (Thousand Character Classic in English), which is a book of Chinese poem that has been used as a primer for teaching Chinese characters to children. Each of officials who were asked wrote the meaning and sound of one Chinese character on the bottom and stamped his name on the left. It was rude to ask someone to write a character without presenting anything in return, even though they had been acquainted. So the father had to prepare a small gift to make the request. Thus, the father composed the Cheon-Ja-Mun with various handwritings into one book and gave the book to his son on his first birthday.
The Cheon-In-Cheon-Ja-Mun is called the Geol-Ja-Cheon-Ja-Mun 乞字千字文 because a father begged officials to write the characters for his son; it is also called the Man-in-mun 萬人文, which means that it was written by many people.
Thus, the book symbolized the great love of a father who went from house to house to ask talented officials to write characters, hoping that his son would be a great person and live a long and happy life by receiving many people’s talents and wisdom.