South Korea: Land of the Morning Calm

Kyongju’s comfortable coexistence with nature

They once called Korea “The Land of the Morning Calm”, a nickname modern-day visitors to Seoul find hilarious.

But if Seoul is a jungle of concrete and business suits, then getting off the train in Kyongju - a four-hour ride away - is akin to stumbling upon a clearing into sunshine and birdsong, forested mountainsides dotted with shrines and statues, and people with time to stop and chat. It’s as if you’re suddenly able to breathe again. Escaping Seoul for Kyongju is the best opportunity you are likely to find in Korea to experience what’s left of that fabled Morning Calm.

If you ask a Korean about Kyongju, the words ‘culture’ and ‘history’ inevitably come up. From about 50 BC to the 10thcentury AD, Kyongju was the capital of the Shilla dynasty and, for about a third of that time, the capital of the whole peninsula. You get the feeling that nothing much has happened there since.

In contrast to bustling modern Korean cities such as Seoul, Pusan or Taegu, Kyongju is small and relaxed - seemingly content to live off its millennium-old reputation. The town and surrounding area seem to exist as a kind of tomb, temple, palace, pleasure garden, statue, castle, and open-air museum.

My friend Dan and I picked up a map as we left the station and walked to the Hanjin-jang Yogwan. We’d stayed in a few yogwans (cheap family-run hotels often doubling as brothels) on our travels, and this one definitely wasn’t typical in that it openly catered to foreign tourists. The owner, a bronzed old man, somehow managed to check us in and give advice on bus schedules and what to see, all without interrupting his t’ai chi routine.

The town is small enough to get to know in an afternoon, and is surrounded by a series of interconnected historical sites all accessible by foot.

We started by strolling around the tombs of the Shilla kings and their families. These tombs take the form of landscaped grassy knolls—the bigger the mound, the more important the occupant. Looking at these tombs, I was struck by the clean sweeping lines and the absence of any monument other than the hill itself. Here is where the recurring motif of Kyongju began insinuating itself into our minds, that of humankind residing among, instead of in conflict with, the natural world.

After a couple of beers in an alfresco bar (none of these exist in Seoul) Dan suggested following the yogwan owner’s advice and walking over to Anapji Pond, a pleasure garden built on the orders of King Munmu in 672 AD. The original palace no longer exists and the locals blame the Japanese. Actually, there isn’t much the Japanese don’t get blamed for in Korea.

Thankfully, the lily-covered pond and its tree-lined grounds maintain much of their past splendor, quietly whispering, for those who listen, the reason the pleasure garden was built in the first place.

Venturing a little further, the next morning we caught a local bus to Namsan, a diminutive mountain a few miles south of Kyongju. You can spend the day hiking up, down and all round Namsan and still see only a fraction of the recommended sites. Among those we came across were two pagodas (Buddhist shrines) with their rock statues, intricately-painted lattice-work and smoldering incense sticks. There was also an old nunnery nestling amid some tall conifers, and a temple complex with some striking relief carvings. Eventually, bewildered by choice, Dan and I put away our map and simply followed our noses.

Clambering haphazardly over the mountainsides sums up, for me, the whole point of Kyongju: that of the comfortable coexistence with nature. It’s impossible to walk in any direction on Namsan for more than a few minutes without coming across chunks of rock carved with flowing Buddhist images (no straight lines, only easy curves). The forested pathways are filled with minor curiosities and photo opportunities: a pebble with a Buddha’s head carved on it, bunches of dried flowers left as offerings beside free-standing boulders, a water-filled teapot on the floor of a forest glade—now that I think of it, very curious indeed.

I could also write about Chomsongdae, a seventh century astronomical observatory; the ‘Triple Buddha’ statues; the Punhwangsa Pagoda; the glass-encased Sakyamuni Buddha; the bearded old monk who lives at the top of Namsan; or the authentically-preserved and still inhabited Yangdong folk village, but I’ve run out of space, just as Dan and I ran out of time.

The point is, of course, you don’t need to see all of Kyongju, but just enough to begin to appreciate the truth behind The Land of the Morning Calm.

Author: J. David Cox