Ch'oe Musŏn

Ch'oe Musŏn (1325–1395) was a Goryeo general and inventor who gave Korea its first domestic gunpowder. As wokou pirates raided Goryeo's coasts and inland, he traced the three ingredients of powder and, after years of failed experiments, bribed the Chinese merchant Li Yuan for the manufacturing secret, producing gunpowder between 1374 and 1376.

In 1377 the court set up an official firearms bureau, where he devised shipboard cannons, hand cannons and rocket arrows; in 1380 his guns helped sink over five hundred pirate ships at Jinpo. After the founding of Joseon he retired and died in 1395, and King Taejo granted him an honorary office posthumously.