Bulguksa Temple

It is the morning after, in 1593. a Japanese army has been on the Korean peninsula for a year, and the old Silla capital of Gyeongju lies in its path. Overnight the wooden halls of Bulguksa, the painted corridors, the gates, the tiled roofs, have gone up in flames. What is left standing in the smoke is exactly what fire cannot eat: two stone pagodas facing each other across an empty courtyard, a pair of granite bridge-staircases climbing to a terrace with nothing on it, and the stone platforms where the halls used to be. For the next four centuries the story of Bulguksa is the story of that skeleton slowly growing its body back.

A Minister And His Two Sets Of Parents

The temple was begun in 751 by Kim Daeseong, chief minister of the Silla kingdom. The Samguk Yusa, a collection of histories and legends compiled in the thirteenth century, tells it this way: he built Bulguksa for the parents of his present life, and the Seokguram grotto on the mountain above it for the parents of a previous one. He died in 774 before the work was finished, and the royal court completed it. How much of the story is legend is anyone's guess, but the dates land squarely in Silla's golden stretch. The kingdom had unified most of the peninsula in 668, and Gyeongju had spent a century as a laboratory for Buddhist building.

The name means "Temple of the Buddha Land," and the architecture takes the name seriously. A visitor climbing from the lower courtyard to the main hall is supposed to be leaving the ordinary world and entering the Buddha's. The transition is built in stone: two staircases, Cheongungyo and Baegungyo, the Blue Cloud Bridge and the White Cloud Bridge, with an arched passage beneath and steps above in two flights. They are bridges because the climber is meant to be crossing worlds, not water. A smaller pair beside them, Yeonhwagyo and Chilbogyo, the Lotus and Seven Treasures bridges, does the same job for the hall next door. These are eighth-century stones. The timber above them has been replaced more times than anyone can count; the granite has never moved.

In the main courtyard stand the two pagodas. Seokgatap is plain, three tiers, almost without ornament. Dabotap is its opposite: railings, staircases, an octagonal crown, a wooden building translated into stone. The contrast is deliberate. One represents Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha; the other Prabhutaratna, the Buddha who in the Lotus Sutra appears to hear him preach. Dabotap once had four stone lions at its corners. One remains; the other three disappeared in the early twentieth century.

Growing Back

After the fire of 1593 nothing happened quickly. The Joseon dynasty was a Confucian state with limited enthusiasm for Buddhist temples, and rebuilding proceeded at the pace of monks and local donors. A few halls went up again in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and then decayed again. Photographs from the early 1900s show the main halls standing, but the galleries around them gone, the stone staircases rising out of weeds, the courtyard bare earth.

Partial repairs were made under Japanese colonial rule between 1910 and 1945, but the real reconstruction ran from 1969 to 1973, when the South Korean government rebuilt the corridors, gates and side halls in timber following the pre-fire layout. Most of the wood you walk through today dates from those four years. What dates from the eighth century is the stone under your feet and the two gilt-bronze Buddhas inside the halls. Everything else has been set on top more than once.

What Was Inside The Pagoda

In 1966 thieves tried to break into Seokgatap, guessing that something valuable was sealed inside. They shifted the stones and damaged the pagoda but never reached the interior. When it was dismantled for repair, a box was found in a cavity within the second tier, and in the box, rolled up, was the Mugujeonggwang Dharani Sutra: a Buddhist text printed from carved wooden blocks. The pagoda was built around 751 and the scroll was placed inside at the time, which makes it one of the oldest woodblock-printed texts known anywhere. Seven centuries before printing reached Europe, someone printed this, rolled it, sealed it in stone and walked away. Without the burglars it would still be there.

Seokgatap was dismantled once more, this time on purpose, between 2012 and 2016, and its contents recorded under rather better conditions.

Today

Bulguksa is a working temple of the Jogye Order; monks still chant the morning service. It was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1995 together with Seokguram. Dabotap is stamped on South Korea's ten-won coin, so a sizeable share of the country carries the temple in its pockets.

The threats now are time and foot traffic rather than armies. The timber halls are repainted every few decades; the stone bridges are closed to walking so the steps stop wearing. In 2016 the Gyeongju area was shaken by the strongest earthquake South Korea has recorded, and the temple came through with little more than hairline cracks. The eighth-century stone held once again. Who will raise the next generation of timber on top of it is, as always, an open question.