(b Kyongju, North Kyongsang Province, AD 711; d 791). Korean calligrapher. Active during the Unified Silla period (668–918), he was revered as the sage calligrapher of Korea from the Koryo period (918–1392) onwards. He was famous for his clerical, running and grass scripts and is said to have modelled his calligraphy upon that of the Chinese calligraphers Wang Xizhi and Ouyang Xun (see KOREA, §V, 3). However, the Nanggong taesa paegwol soun t’ap pi, a stele dedicated to the monk Nanggong (Seoul, Kyongbok Pal.; originally erected in T’aeja Temple, Ponghwa District, North Kyongsang Province), the only extant evidence of his work, shows an individual and distinctive style. It consists of characters from works by Kim Saeng that were collected and compiled in 954 by the monk Tanmok and is executed in running script, a form well suited to display the spirit of the writer. Each stroke of the characters shows great variation in thickness, with vertical strokes tending to bend towards the centre of the character like parentheses (see Kim, Choi and Im, pl. 109). Such characteristics are quite unusual for the time, as calligraphers in both China and Korea worked more often in the regulated, neat strokes of Wang Xizhi or the early Tang-period masters such as Ouyang Xun or Chu Suiliang. It was apparently Kim’s expression of his own spirit in his calligraphy that earned him his fame. While other calligraphic works are attributed to him, none is considered authentic.

• Kim Saeng
  • Korea, §V, 2: Calligraphy: Unified Silla, AD 668–918