Bulguksa, Seokguram and Gyeongju: A Student's View

20 July 2009

We spent two nights in Busan. Then we travelled to Gyeongju, a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site, known as "the museum without walls," which is my favourite part of the trip away so far.

The landscape was beautiful, for starters there are no skyscrapers and all the buildings reflect a traditional Korean style. Roofs of the buildings are similar to the ones in temples and palaces. The rest of the landscape is paddy fields and other agriculture set against a backdrop of mountains. I will definitely come back again; it was the kind of landscape I had been hoping to see. The area holds a lot of sites of historical or religious importance.

We visited Bulguksa temple here which was great before heading up the mountain (in a car) to see the famous Seokguram Grotto which holds one of the national treasures, the Sakyamuni Buddha statue (mid-8th century CE) within a cave. This was indeed beautiful.

From the car park, we took a short walk through the forest before heading up to the Grotto. First we reached a small temple on the way. As you look up from there, you can see the temple style entrance to the cave nestled in the mountain. On our way up it was pretty misty so it looks really mysterious and extremely atmospheric. The statue I expected to be bigger in some ways and it was protected behind glass, but I can easily imagine being there with no tourists and nothing covering the entrance of the cave and just sitting next to the Buddha watching out over the mountainside!

Commentary by Helena Stokes, Year 3, Creative Writing and Media Communications
Photos by Dr. M. Deegalle