A Short Trip to Gyeongju
Wednesday 29th April
With my students suffering a week of mid-term exam hell, I decide to put my spare time to good use, and go somewhere. It doesn’t take a great deal of consideration to decide that somewhere will be Gyeongju, the ancient capital of the Silla Dynasty, which ruled the Korean Peninsula from 668 to 918 AD. It’s been said many times that this city is like an open-air museum, so numerous are the tombs, temples, pagodas and pavilions that still survive after almost 1500 years. The fact that much of this ‘survival’ is actually the result of extensive and relatively recent restoration makes the place no less remarkable, and it boasts the added draw of being a stone’s throw from the Bulguksa Temple, a complex I’ve been meaning to visit since I arrived in this country. Lying only a four hour bus journey from Seoul, Gyeongju is also readily accessible.
It’s a sunny, cheerful morning, as befits the start of a journey, although with the exception of a one-stop stretch between Seokgye and Taereung, the entire 70 minute subway ride to Express Bus Terminal is less cheerful, being as it is completely rammed. Ideal conditions for picking up a bit of swine flu.
Having arrived, I suffer some confusion, since I can find signs directing me to ticket offices for what must amount to every town and city in Korea, although not unfortunately the very one I wish to go to. I do locate the boarding gate (or at least a sign pointing to it) but then a boarding gate with no ticket is only marginally more useful than no boarding gate at all. After significant back tracking, and in a tucked-away corner, I finally stumble upon the ticket booth for Gyeongju and Busan. Why the two major tourist centres in the south of the country, one of which is Korea’s second city, should be hidden with such professionalism is a mystery. Nonetheless, as luck would have it the ‘Deluxe Non-Stop’ bus for Gyeongju departs in a mere ten minutes, so no further relationship need be built with the inconveniences of the Express Bus Terminal.
Rather than being one of the countries prime historical and tourist sites, one would more likely imagine, from the four people that make up the entire passenger roster, that Gyeongju was the centre of a contagious disease outbreak. Perhaps it’s just Wednesday. I’m already sleepy as we pull out into the busy streets of Gangnam in the south of the city, and have progressed effortlessly from sleepy to asleep long before we leave the environs of Seoul. Indeed, I only wake up at the half-way rest stop, taken at a pleasant little place nestled among green hills somewhere in Chungcheongbuk-Do, a province in the centre of South Korea.
It’s just after 1pm when we pull off the highway along with a worryingly large number of tour buses, and proceed through a large, fake, ornamental gate bearing the name Gyeongju in Korean, Chinese, and English. Mere minutes later we’re approaching the bus terminal. My first observation is that Gyeongju has many more traditional, tiled roofs than I’ve seen anywhere else in the country. Whether these are original, or have been converted in order to enhance the city’s charm is a matter of uncertainty.
The first order of business, as always, is lodging. There’s no shortage; around the bus terminal it seems every other building is a yeogwan (cheap Korean guesthouse) a hotel, or a motel, and I’m greeted with names such as ‘Icarus Motel’, ‘Hotel Royal’, and ‘Magic Motel’, which almost certainly, judging from the look of it, isn’t. I settle for Hanjin Hostel, mentioned in the LP as being cheap and cheerful, with a roof terrace. The owner, as is often the way of things where Korean places of lodging are concerned, is about 75 years old, and I find him lying on the floor in a vest and pyjama bottoms. It takes him quite a while to shuffle out of his little office, although not as long as it takes him to shuffle up the stairs to the second floor. Still, to his credit, he speaks a respectable smattering of English, and seems quite friendly and helpful. Once installed in room 203, for the stately sum of \20,000 (10USD) a night, I’m given a map, and directions to such things as ‘very big supermarket’, ‘ATM’ and perhaps pessimistically, ‘police station’. He then asks me how much I weigh, and informs me that I’m, “Very healthy.”
Buoyed up by this encouraging medical assessment, I head out to see what Gyeongju town centre has to offer. My first stop, having passed and noted the location of the aforementioned ‘very big supermarket’ is the Noseo-Dong Tombs, one of many collections of Silla Dynasty burial mounds, or tumuli as I prefer to call them, in Gyeongju. This particular group contains the largest remaining Silla tumulus in the country. Bonghwadae as it’s known, is over 22 metres high, and has a circumference of over 250 metres. All the tombs date from the 4th and 5th centuries AD, and many are of quite some size, although in all honesty, how spectacular a mound of dirt can ever be I’m not sure.
Across the road the tumuli continue in the not inexplicably-named Tumuli Park. Here it’s possible to actually enter one of them, the fancifully named, ‘Heavenly Horse Tomb’. Inside are displayed many of the artefacts recovered from within, and one can also see the spot where the inhabitant (if that’s the right word) was originally placed. More interesting to me though is the chance to observe the mound in cross-section. Basically, the tombs were created thus – atop a layer of gravel and stone slabs was placed, centrally, a wooden chamber into which the deceased (plus artefacts) was inserted. Once sealed, this chamber was covered all around with more stones, to create a large mound. This was then covered in clay, and once dried a layer of dirt was added, and then planted with grass. All of this effort produced the large, grassy hillocks that abound throughout Gyeongju today. I enjoy exploring the inside of Heavenly Horse Tomb, until a horde of loud Elementary School children come flooding in like a barbarian invasion force. I retreat to more civilized climes.
A short distance away is Wolseong Park, in which can be found East Asia’s oldest observatory – Cheomseongdae. It looks like a small castle turret although apparently is a work of not inconsiderable technical skill, its various layers corresponding to days, weeks, and months of the year, and its orientation aligned to certain stars. Sadly, once again my enjoyment is cut short by the arrival of vast numbers of screaming schoolchildren, this time all wearing identical blue shirts. It seems actually that visiting Gyeongju is as much about avoiding school parties as it is about visiting historical sites. I move on.
En route to Anapji Pond, King Munmu’s 7th century pleasure garden, I pass the edges of Banweolseong, an ancient fortress and royal palace. Unfortunately this once great edifice is now reduced to some stones sticking up through the grass, and I am unable to get the imagination sufficiently fired even to begin contemplating its former glory. At the pleasure garden too regrettably, the passage of time has not gone unmarked. Only three small pavilions remain of what was once a sprawling complex of buildings constructed round a large ornamental pond flanked by forest. Most of what used to stand here ended up in the pond itself by all accounts. Still, it’s a very pleasant place if one is skilled in one’s efforts to evade school parties, and it’s clear that in its original form it would indeed have been spectacularly beautiful, particularly with the addition of a liberal number of concubines.
With the various wonders of central Gyeongju now visited, I find myself rapaciously hungry, and head back towards to hostel for a bite to eat. On the way, I stop off at ‘very big supermarket’ for a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, which I hope will compliment early evening on the roof terrace perfectly. A half hour or so later finds me beneath cloudless skies as the sun hangs above the western mountains. The roof terrace is really more accurately described as simply a roof, and there’s nobody else up there (in fact I’m not sure there’s anybody else in the hostel at all) but no matter. Sunset, wine, journal, and a new city; I have all I require.
It’s odd actually; I realise that after almost six years in this country, this is the first time I’ve visited another part of Korea alone. I visited Jeju Island, Seoraksan National Park, and Deokjeokdo with Jung-ok, Daecheon with William, and Busan with my friend Chuckie, but this is a first. It feels rather weird – I’m in Korea, but I’m travelling. I’m surrounded by the familiar, but I’m somewhere new. It’s particularly strange to be staying in a hostel, but to know that Jung-Ok is a text message away.
With a spectacular sunset over, and the standard Korean neon adornments beginning to flash, pulse, and sparkle, it’s time to find some entertainment. There’s a bar mentioned in the guidebook, but after about half an hour of grid searching every street near its apparent location, I can only conclude that neither it, nor the road it is supposed to be on, actually exist. In fact, I begin to think that, in a worrying parallel to Taipei, Gyeongju has no drinking establishments whatsoever. It abounds with clothing stores, electrical shops, cosmetics boutiques, hairdressers, and other such superfluences, but no bars. This is Korea for goodness sake! A lot more searching and I finally find a place. It’s called Oolie Boolie Bar, and inside are two barmaids, and three middle-aged Korean men. The music is dire. Nevertheless, it’s my only option, so I order a Long Island Ice Tea and hope for the best. Neither of the barmaids speaks more than a word or two of English, but they’re friendly, and we get by in broken Korean. By the time I’ve been there a while, and especially after the other customers have left, we’re getting on quite well, and I’m actually enjoying myself. Hui Young and Ji Suk are their names, and the latter astounds me with the revelation that she’s a 38 year-old mother of two. She looks like a student! I leave just before midnight, with the promise that if I return tomorrow, I’ll be given a whiskey and coke on the house.
Thursday 30th April
I am inexplicably wide awake at 6am, but after a visit to the loo I return to bed, and by the time the alarm goes off at 7.30, I’m exhausted. Even at 9 o’clock when I finally rise, I have to drag myself out of the bed. I hit the streets soon enough though, for today I am heading out of town to Bulguksa Temple, and then Seokguram Grotto, both some distance to the south-east. The no.11 bus for Bulguksa arrives promptly, and it’s not long before Gyeongju gives way to hills and rice fields, punctuated by the inevitable resorts and hotels, plus the very uninevitable enormous glass tower with the shape of a giant pagoda cut out of the middle of it (?!) I have no explanation. The onboard announcements about which stops we’re approaching are at a volume only audible through the use of sophisticated sound equipment, but I’m not too worried, as Bulguksa is apparently the last stop anyway. As we’re pulling away from a large car park, at which we were only stationary for about five seconds, two Korean girls suddenly get up saying, “Wasn’t that Bulguksa?” to each other. It turns out it was, the driver just didn’t bother to inform any of the bus load of tourists he was carrying. He seemingly thought it quite normal that a bunch of people would ride all the way out here just to stay on the bus as it began its return circuit to Gyeongju; not especially helpful. Anyway, he pulls up again one hundred or so yards later, and everyone gets off.
From the car park it’s a short walk to the ticket booth on the slopes of Mt.Toham, where a large sign displays a map of the complex. It certainly looks impressive. Once though the gate, a pleasant, forested track leads upwards, and it’s now that I hear the awful sound of very large numbers of children echoing down through the woods from somewhere up ahead. I immediately regret not having got up earlier. I regret it even more when I reach the complex itself. It is swarming, and that isn’t an overstatement. Clearly the only way this will even be tolerable, let alone enjoyable, is by shutting the world out as much as possible. It’s therefore on with the dark shades and in with the earphones. I select some suitably atmospheric oriental music, and turn it to a volume that mostly drowns out the cacophony around me.
Bulguksa (Temple of the Buddha Land) was originally constructed in 528 by King Beop Heung, and then later enlarged to its current size by King Gyeong Deok in 751. It survived the next 800 years until the Japanese invasion in the 16th century, when it was burnt to the ground. For four centuries it lay in ruin, and it wasn’t until the 1960s that renovations began to restore it to its original glory. It’s now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
In the main courtyard, I’m greeted by National Treasures Nos. 22 and 23. The former is the combined structure of Lotus Flower Bridge and Seven Treasures Bridge, which form a staircase leading to Peace Enhancing Gate. The stairs were originally carved with delicate lotus flowers, although 1200 years of pilgrim footfalls have worn these away entirely. A little to the east, National Treasure No. 23 is another pair of bridge staircases, Blue Cloud Bridge and White Cloud Bridge. Built in 750, these are larger than their counterparts, and contain 33 steps, corresponding to the 33 stages of enlightenment. Access is now forbidden, but if it wasn’t, the 33 steps could be followed up to Purple Mist Gate, beyond which lies the Hall of Great Enlightenment. This is the largest hall in the complex, and contains two stone pagodas. Dabotap, the larger of the two stands 10.4 metres tall, but is presently under restoration, so is surrounded by scaffolding, with only the topmost section visible. I seem indeed to have a habit of arriving at places of historical interest to find them shrouded in scaffolding. Seokgatap is smaller, at just over 8 metres, although does bear the distinction not only of being visible, but also of having a more impressive name. Its full title is Sakyamuni Yeoraesangjuseolbeoptap, or The Shadowless Pagoda. The story tells that both pagodas were constructed by a mason known as Asadal of Baekje. He became so consumed by the long work, that he neglected his wife, who was turned away whenever she tried to visit, as women could not enter the temple. Eventually, when she became rather distraught, she was directed to Shadow Pond, where she would be able to see her husband’s reflection in the water as he worked on the top of the pagoda. When she gazed into the water, all she could see was the completed Dabotap, and her husband was nowhere in sight. In what I consider to be somewhat of an overreaction, in light of the fact that he could well have been on his lunch break, or using the conveniences, she threw herself in the pond and drowned. Asadal apparently, as it turns out, had recently finished Dabotap, and was now working on Seokgatap, which is why it gets the name Shadowless Pagoda, because his wife was unable to see it in the waters of Shadow Pond.
Interestingly, in 1966, thieves dynamited Seokgatap in order to steal the treasures within it. They were thwarted by the monks, but their efforts exposed what they were looking for. Inside the pagoda the monks found various reliquaries, as well as the oldest woodblock printed material in the world – a copy of the Mugujeongwang Great Dharani Sutra, which has since become National Treasure No. 126. In fact, without going into too much detail, Bulguksa it seems is home not only to National Treasures 22, 23, and 126, but also 20, 21, 26, 27, and 61.
From the highest point in the complex, a shrine containing an image of Avalokitesvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, I look down across a sea of tiled roofs and courtyards, surrounded by forest in its spring glory. This single view alone is enough to have made this trip worthwhile, and despite a few doubts, Bulguksa has not disappointed me. I had feared after six years, that my expectations might have outdone reality, but happily it’s every bit as beautiful as I’d hoped. The craftsmanship of the buildings is exquisite, particularly the carpentry and painting of the eaves, which demonstrate the Asian penchant for expressing religious devotion through intricacy and complexity. It’s easy to see how Bulguksa could have taken twenty-three years to complete.
For much of my time at Bulguksa, I’m in the middle of a sea of school children, although I mostly scowl at them to dissuade attempts at communication. Nonetheless, it’s possible to avoid the school parties in some of the more remote corners of the complex, and only one particularly persistent child really makes an effort to get my attention. He shouts, “Hey!” at me three times, then pulls on my sleeve and tries to take my photo. Since I’m feeling rather unlike a curiosity in a zoo, museum, or freak show, I say, “No thank you” and make a swift tangent through the nearest ornamental gate.
More peaceful, is Shadow Pond (of the aforementioned feminine overreaction). Here a weeping willow sheds its tears into the water next to an elegant oriental three-arched bridge, while the heights of Mt. Toham rise behind them. It’s an idyllic spot, and just the sort of thing oriental wall hangings are made of. I sit by the still water, absorbing the atmosphere of this place, which has somehow managed to retain its spiritual calm even in the face of a thousand children rampaging nearby. I’d like to remember Bulguksa this way, so I decide to take my leave.
Back in the car park, I jump on a bus to Seokguram, which lies about fifteen minutes further up the mountainside. The journey takes us along a steep, winding mountain road, with deep, plunging, forested gullies and ravines to our right. The driver, fortunately, is a careful soul, but even so there are a few quite bracing moments as we swing round particularly tight hairpins with nothing but a fate you wouldn’t want to contemplate beyond their edges. Climbing higher, sweeping mountainscapes open up beneath the vastness of a sky as clear as any I’ve ever seen. I’m glad I came up here even if only for the journey. Entering another car park I notice a pleasing lack of tour buses and children. Perhaps they’re all in Bulguksa, and there are none left in the whole province. The peace and quiet remain as I stroll along the winding track that leads through dense forests on the mountainside and then on to the grotto itself.
A Joseon Dynasty style pavilion has been built over the entrance to the artificially made cave that is Seokguram. Completed in 774, the grotto houses a 3.5 metre statue of the Sakyamuni Buddha, along with forty or so other carvings and reliefs, depicting Bodhisattvas, saints, disciples, and the faithful. All are considered to be exquisite examples of Buddhist art. There is a heavy Indian influence to the work, and there are even carvings of two Hindu gods, Brahma and Indra, on the wall behind the Buddha himself. All of this sounds wonderful, but the realities and necessities of preservation are such that the whole of the grotto itself is now behind glass, and it’s almost impossible to make out any small detail, particularly of the carvings behind the statue in the main rotunda. To make matters worse, the cave is badly lit and heavy reflections of the sunlight outside play on the glass, so that one has to lean against it and shield the eyes in order to see anything much at all. Just outside the entrance to the grotto is a sign the purpose of which I can only assume, was to explain the need for these inconveniences, however it succeeds merely in adding its own perplexities to the situation by way of a wonderful sentence stating that “…the glass is placed between the visitor and the grotto in order to keep the inside outside.”
Having returned to Bulguksa, I’m soon on my way back to Gyeongju, and dinner. I dine this evening on dolsot bibimbap, one of my favourite Korean dishes, which consists of a bed of rice, covered with mixed vegetables, a fried egg, and a generous dollop of gochujang, or hot pepper paste, all served in a piping hot stone bowl that is brushed with sesame oil before the rice is added so that the grains around the edge turn crispy and golden brown. Once served, the whole thing is mixed together before being eaten. Indeed, the word bibimbap means ‘Mixed Rice’. Thoroughly satiated, I return to the roof to catch up with the journal. Sunset is a cloudy and unremarkable affair this evening, but it’s still nice to take the time out just to sit and watch it.
When night has descended, I return to Oolie Boolie bar, where I am, as promised, given a free whiskey and coke. I follow it with a few beers and a bit of a chat, before heading back around 11.45, tired, but happy with the day and the trip as a whole. It’s been great to see another part of Korea; I spend so much time in and around Seoul that it’s sometimes easy to forget there’s anything more to this country. Also nice to finally get out on my own here after six years. It’s hard to believe I haven’t done it before. Tomorrow I bid farewell to the ancient Silla capital, and return home to Seoul, the very bustling modern one.
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