If, in the course of today, you use a mobile phone, drive a car or watch TV, or if you find your children playing with their robot pet, the chances are that at least one of these objects will have been made in Korea. As we all know, Korea is one of Asia's "tiger" economies, provider of high technology to the world. We tend to think of it as a new player on the global stage - but that of course is not how Koreans see themselves, for Korea has always been pivotal in relations between China and Japan, and it has a long tradition of technological inventions. It was Korea, for example, that pioneered moveable metal type, and it did it so well before it was invented in Europe. Besides its technology, the other thing that we all know about Korea today is that, since the end of the Second World War in 1945, it has been bitterly and dangerously divided between a communist north and a capitalist south.

Today's object takes us to Korea around the year 700 AD, to a state, newly unified, that was enjoying great prosperity. To a moment in its history that is inevitably now read differently by north and south, but is still central to any modern definition of Korean identity.