Iksan (익산) is a city too small to be considered big yet too big to be considered small. Nestled in its rural surroundings in remote North Jeolla Province, much like Naha vis-à-vis the island of Okinawa (which has a similar population), the city is disproportionately large. But the raw population of three hundred thousand pales in contrast with the urban landscape I have since familiarized myself with in Seoul. Despite this rather minute scale, I have visited the city several times, as the locale is home to the both my relatives and several historical sites comprising a possible ancient capital of the Baekje Kingdom during the reign of the 7th century monarch, King Mu of Baekje 백제 무왕.
Iksan Station (익산역)
The modern-day city nucleus is centered around Iksan Train Station, still often colloquially referred to as “Iri Station” 이리역, reflecting the former 20th century name of area currently occupied by the city of Iksan. Imprinted like an old seal over so much of its current successor’s infrastructure, the name Iri retains its presence over modern-day Iksan like an old apparition, harkening to the days of the early R.O.K. and even earlier to the Japanese occupation, when Iri functioned as a regional transportation hub with the laying of the Honam Railway Line through the city on March 6, 1912 and the subsequent Jeolla Line in 1936. Since then, the strategically located city, situated on vast expanse of flat land (a true rarity in mountainous Korea) between the important cities of Daejeon and Mokpo, served its role as a transportation stronghold faithfully.
During the early twentieth century, rail obviously played a disproportionately large role in determining the fate of nations in an age of imperialist expansion. Korea, at the time within the crosshairs of imperial powers from three continents, was definitely no exception.
Korea’s first rail track, the Gyeongin Railway Line 경인선 was only conceived through foreign capital, aided by ad hoc concessions by the Joseon government in what was perhaps a reflection of the contradictory late-dynastic policy of preserving national autonomy through foreign reliance. In the following decades, Japan, as colonial hegemon, no longer needed to rely on these indirect avenues to initiate its ambitious industrial designs for the Korean peninsula. By the end of the colonial period, Korea boasted some of Asia’s most extensive transport infrastructure. Even while it was subject to draining wartime exploitation in the form of armed mobilization, forced labor, and even sexual slavery, Korea for the most part managed to avoid the extensive physical damage of the Second World War that Japan sustained through successive firebomb/atomic bomb campaigns. Of course, rail also remained a central focus of the fledgling government of the Republic of Korea (R.O.K.), including in the form of projects by Syngman Rhee to rebuild lost infrastructure in the wake of the Korean War and various five-year plans for economic growth initiated by the Park Jung-hee administration.
Throughout the twentieth century, Iri was inextricably tied to this increasing fixation on rail in the Korean peninsula. Exploitative colonial policies were the immediate catalyst for the city’s development, as cities like Iri and Gunsan were actually developed as key components in the grain extraction policies that Japan instituted on such regional breadbasket regions as the southwest. The laying of the first Honam line track was a transformative event, elevating Iri from a small village of ten families called Somri 솜리 to a sizable hub whose population was for a time mostly Japanese (the area having attracted serious numbers of Japanese landowners). Iri never lost this connection to rail transport. Even when such traumatic events as the explosion accident and concomitant destruction of the Iri Train Station on November 11, 1977 (an event commemorated in memorials and museums throughout modern Iksan-si) seemed to threaten the very basis of the city’s perpetual raison d’être, Iri was always able to recover and reassert itself as a giant of railway transit. Every time I visited Iksan, it was by train ride to Iksan Station.
Having used the train route from Seoul to Iksan a couple of times in the past, I cannot imagine that the train routes of the last century would have differed much with the present course that is extensively traveled by countless passengers every day in modern Korea. The aforementioned city of Daejeon, once a serious contender along with Seoul for the position of Korea’s capital city during the Joseon Dynasty and the current first city of the Korea’s centrally situated Hoseo region, is still a central stop on the train line heading south. I last visited Daejeon in 2015 as part of my participation in a homecoming program hosted by an organization of the R.O.K. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and I can easily recommend the urban oasis for any prospective tourist.
Other main attractions worth visiting on the route between Seoul and Iksan are Suwon in Gyeonggi Province, home of UNESCO World Heritage Site Suwon Hwaseong Fortress, and Cheonan, repository of the famous Independence Hall and the largest city in South Chungcheong Province. In terms of enjoying a more intimate view of Korea’s more remote and less touristy hinterland, a trip to the southern provinces via KORAIL is a thoroughly worthy experience.
Iksan Modern History Museum (Samsan Hospital) 익산근대역사관 (삼산의원)
Directly east of Iksan Station is the Iksan Culture and Arts Street, a project of the typical mold of aggressive tourism promotion that now marks landscapes throughout urban Korea. The street is undoubtedly charming, but noticeably lacks any large crowds, a potential boon for tourists who would want to enjoy the luxury of an attractive spot sans fellow tourists. For such people, a stroll down the artroad on a slow afternoon will be an ideal experience.
In terms of aesthetics, the artroad was a variegated blossom of pastel colors superimposed on an otherwise pedestrian urban block. The deliberate setting seemed steeped in the art of the so-called “slow city” (a much sought-after virtue in Korea’s expeditious urban life), leaving existing shops mostly intact while intermittently adding visual treats every so often to tempt the soliciting eye. A single, narrow strip of concrete reciprocated the road’s basal responsibility to handle automobile traffic, but the huge, peppered-tan sidewalks enjoyed total hegemony of space, melting into the single car lane with impunity. Most got the message, and automobile traffic was minimal throughout my visit. This was strictly to be a road meant for walking.
The shops themselves were also a source for virtuous viewing, as tables populated with handcrafted bric-a-brac and duck figurine bibelots straddled glary all-glass windows. The assorted shops seemed to handsomely worn by the passing of time, each glinting a certain luminescent, golden nostalgia.
Near the center of the block is the Iksan Modern History Museum, a highly informative receptacle of urban history elegantly sheathed within a local historical gem. The old Samsan Hospital Building (Registered Cultural Heritage No. 180 등록문화재 제180호) was originally erected in the same Jungang District, the center of colonial Iksan, but on a different street just two blocks east, on what used to be a busy thoroughfare. Since its conception in 1922, the building functioned as a hospital that focused on treating Koreans until it was converted to the headquarters of various companies and banks immediately after liberation in 1945.
The building was the personal project of Samsan Kim Byeong-su 김병수, ‘Samsan’ 삼산, the namesake of the hospital, being Kim’s ‘ho’ 號 or personal nom de plume. Kim was an alumnus of Severance Medical School or ‘Uijeon’ 의전 (a term denoting medical schools during the colonial period), who spent the year 1919 organizing independence rallies in Gunsan and Iksan as part of the 3.1 March First Independence Movement and subsequently serving jail time the next year in the landmark Seodaemun Prison in Seoul. Thus, Kim was an independence activist with deep connections with two mainstay landmarks of modern-day Seodaemun District in Seoul: Yonsei University and Seodaemun Prison.
However, Kim Byeong-su was a figure even more inextricably tied to Iri and its modern history. In addition to providing preferential medical treatment to Koreans in Iri at a time of discriminatory colonial social policies, Kim echoed such leaders as Ahn Chang-ho (who led patriotic movements to advance education in America) by working with churches to provide education to Korean children and supporting girls schools and night classes to assist the academic development of marginalized groups. Kim also organized the nationalist-tinted Iksan Doctors Association 익산의사회 to rival the pro-Japanese Iri Doctors Association 이리의사회, opening a new front of patriotic activity in the realm of medicine. Of course, his determination to the cause of national advancement is manifest most clearly in the Samsan Hospital building, a fine example of colonial-era infrastructure which, at the time, showcased both native adaptations of westernized architectural motifs and such cutting-edge medical facilities as an X-Ray imaging room.
The current hospital building, having only recently undergone renovation, was mostly empty during my visit. The building, fronted by a copious pebblestone chessboard of alternating white-black bricks, commanded the visitor’s attention through the idiosyncratically playful, almost puerile, coloration of its main façade and the conspicuous centrality of its entrance, explicated through such eclectic flourishes as pointed arches, painted cornices and Gothic windows. Behind the glass transom and double doors, the first floor was refitted as a panel exhibition museum, each panel reflecting a key facet of Iksan’s modern-era past. The wooden framework was laid bare on the ceiling in a giant display of antique rusticity amidst new eggshell-white walls and molding.
Collectively, the exhibition was a mostly chronological narrative history of the modern development of Iksan, from its dynastic antecedents to the crucial inflection point the area faced by the time of the transport infrastructure building and grain extraction policies conducted by colonial Japan. As hinted earlier, Japan had used the colonial outposts (i.e. Taiwan and Korea) that it controlled after wresting regional hegemony from China and Russia as effective breadbaskets for the naichi 内地 (such efforts would only have intensified after the domestic firestorm caused by the 米騒動 kome sōdō or rice riots left the contemporary Japanese political elite thoroughly shaken). The opening portions of the museum outlines how the introduction of rail elevated an erstwhile village into the city of Iri, which quickly surpassed old dynastic-era Iksan (the latter centering mostly around Geumma 금마, an area around Mireuksan 미륵산 Mountain with deep ties to the history of the ancient states of Mahan 마한 and Baekje 백제). The museum then outlines the development of Iri during the Japanese occupation, showcasing old photographs of the Oriental Development Company 東洋拓殖株式会社 branch building and other occupation-era infrastructure. The last section explained prominent post-liberation events in the area (e.g. bombing of Iri Station during the Korean War and the 1977 explosion accident).
Despite its renovated appearance, the interior still retained traces from the past century. Towards the end of the panel exhibition, for example, was an old faded sky-blue safe sporting glaring rust damage, a relic from the immediate post-liberation period when the building was occupied first by the Korea Heungeup Bank 한국흥업은행 and later the People’s Bank 국민은행 during the fifties and sixties, respectively. A few feet away a glass panel revealed the original masonry supporting the structure, which, according to the museum guide, survived the ordeal of methodical disassembly, relocation, and reassembly during the building’s move to its current location.
The second floor was a well-lit open space that proffered sublime viewing of the outside artroad from various angles. On the floor was a map of Iksan and its environs, the constituent neighborhoods or ‘dong’ 동 that make up the city itself being illustrated using various colors. The question panel near the top of the massive work challenged visitors to place post-it notes on the dong that they felt needed the most municipal change. On one wall, visitors were asked to voice their opinion content of the changes that they feel are needed for Iksan’s development. A small side room showcased several existing municipal development proposals, gauging public support of each by allowing visitors to vote for the proposal of their liking using poker chips. Overall, the entire floor seemed to be dedicated as an open-forum space for receiving feedback from the public (as well as perhaps a resting place for tired tourists to sit on handsome benches and distended windowsills).
Mireuksaji 미륵사지 (Mireuk Temple Site)
Mireuksa or Mireuk Temple is a historical site inextricably tied to the dynastic restoration projects of the reformist King Mu 무왕 of the ancient Baekje 백제 Kingdom (18 BC – 660 AD). A brief historical overview is needed in explaining this royal project.
The Baekje Kingdom, which was mainly based in Korea’s southwest Jeolla and Chungcheong Provinces, was able to reach its zenith of territory and military strength during the 4th century reign of King Geunchogo 근초고왕 (r. 346 – 375) before its regional rivals Goguryeo and Silla were able to achieve their respective golden ages in the succeeding centuries.
Though war was a perennial feature of the entire three-kingdoms period, most skirmishes during this initial phase centered on the rivalry between the Goguryeo and Baekje kingdoms, with more bad blood arising between the two after the death of Goguryeo’s King Gogugwon 고국원왕 at the hands of Baekje forces during a desperate battle at the Goguryeo capital of Pyongyang. However, with the juggernaut of King Gwanggaeto the Great’s 광개토대왕 military expeditions, which were able to neutralize military threats to Goguryeo from both Baekje and various ethnic Xianbei 鮮卑 dynasties to its west, the tide shifted sharply in favor of Goguryeo. Goguryeo perhaps exacted the ultimate revenge on Baekje by committing its own version of regicide, executing a defeated and captured King Gaero 개로왕 in 475 AD. Baekje, having atrophied precipitously in territory, shriveled into a rump of its former self and began to manifest a profound crisis of royal authority, suffering a spate of royal assassinations and power struggles among hegemonic clans.
Other than this erosion of royal authority, two other developments were notable during the period immediately after King Gaero’s ignominious death. The first was the moving of the royal capital away from the Han river area, the traditional heart of Baekje (such superb historical sites as Mongcheontoseong 몽촌토성 Fortress remain in modern-day Seoul), to a mountainous portion of Ungjin 웅진 (present-day Gongju 공주). The site, encircled by the venerable walls of Gongsanseong 공산성 Fortress, is virtuous in terms of defense, reflecting the immediate needs of a dynasty recovering from shocking military setbacks.
Crouching in this mountain lair, Baekje plotted revenge against Goguryeo through a pivotal military alliance with the neighboring Silla Kingdom. Such a diplomatic maneuver was essentially an extension of the status-quo. Indeed, King Gaero’s death immediately preceded the belated arrival of a reinforcement army of ten-thousand by Silla, which had been convinced to join the fight against Goguryeo by none other than Baekje’s crown prince and Gaero’s immediate successor, King Munju 문주왕 of Baekje. The resulting Silla-Baekje Alliance 나제동맹 lasted for a century, during which Baekje enjoyed a period of dynastic recovery, both in terms of territory and royal authority, during the reigns of Kings Muryeong 무령왕 (r. 501-523) and Seong 성왕 (r. 523-554). The latter opened a new age in Baekje’s history by building a new capital in Sabi in modern-day Buyeo, South Chungcheong Province.
The brief flowering of Baekje during the half century of rule under these two monarchs soon collapsed after the capstone of Baekje’s diplomatic policy, the Silla-Baekje Alliance, was thoroughly deracinated by a volte-face committed by its erstwhile ally during a critical moment of military confrontation with Goguryeo. This critical moment came in 551 AD, when for the first time in a century, Baekje was able to retake its traditional Han River homeland through military force (having been aided by a united offensive front with Silla and Goguryeo’s debilitating conflicts with Tujue 突厥 on the its western border).
However, at this critical juncture, Baekje (at the time called Nambuyeo 남부여 “Southern Buyeo” in what is perceived to be an evocation by King Seong of Baekje’s roots, shared with Goguryeo, in the ancient Buyeo Kingdom) lost it’s hard-earned homecoming when Silla betrayed the century-old Silla-Baekje Alliance in a dramatic about-face and seized Baekje’s gains in the Han River basin. What ensued was a ill-fated deathmatch between Baekje and Silla, in which King Seong was killed by Silla forces near present-day Okcheon in North Chungcheong Province and nearly thirty-thousand Baekje soldiers lost their lives. Silla was ascendant while Baekje scrambled to replace its lost leader and lick its gaping wounds.
Fortunately for Baekje, what followed this nadir was the relatively long reign of King Wideok 위덕왕, who, despite his ignominious role in the failed war with Silla which cost his father’s life, prevented as king the immediate fall of the dynasty. At the same time, Silla, now Baekje’s blood-rival, remained regional hegemon, destroying the Gaya Confederacy (a confederacy of buffer states between Baekje and Silla) in 562 AD.
It was at this late juncture, with the complete solidification of the three-kingdom status-quo on the Korean peninsula, that the protagonist of Mireuksa’s founding myth, King Mu (r. 600 – 641 AD) arrived on the historical scene as the pugnacious ruler of a vengeful Baekje. True to his posthumous name Mu 武 (lit. martial or military), King Mu was the perennial tormentor of Silla’s extended borders, driving a stake deep into the heart of a Silla now weakened through an erosion of royal authority. Along with his military exploits, King Wu was known for his expansive building projects, from expansive palaces to an imperial-scale artificial lake and island.
Temples were another major infrastructure item on Mu’s bucket list. Buddhism had been introduced to Goguryeo and Baekje during the 4th century. By the time Silla, which only adopted the new religion from the west during the 6th-century reign of King Beopheung 법흥왕, Baekje had already developed Buddhism significantly over two centuries, its reliance on the religion only waxing through decades of national desperation and foreign incursions (a theme mirrored perhaps in the grand Goryeo-Dynasty Buddhist projects, such as the Tripitaka Koreana, undertaken during such national crises as the Mongol invasions). King Mu affirmed this priority by constructing the vast Wangheungsa 왕흥사 Temple near the Baekje capital of Sabi (present-day Buyeo 부여, South Chungcheong Province).
However, the largest and most well-known project is Mireuksa Temple at the foot of Mireuk Mountain 미륵산 near the Geumma area of present-day Iksan. Mireuk Bosal 미륵보살, the temple’s namesake, is the Korean name for the Maitreya Buddha, a bodhisattva who in Buddhist tradition will manifest himself in a future age (succeeding the incumbent Gautama Buddha, Siddhārtha 석가모니). According to the founding legend of Mireuksa Temple written in the Samguk Yusa, King Mu and his wife Princess Seonhwa (who, according to the iconic Seodong legend of King Mu’s formative years, was the beautiful daughter of King Jinpyeong 진평왕 of Silla) passed by a pond below Yonghwa Mountain 용화산 on the way to a temple. The royal couple witnessed the Mireuk Samjon 미륵삼존, an image featuring a trio of Buddhas with the Maitreya Buddha in the center (a common motif in Korean art from ancient times), emerging from the surface of the water. Inspired by this encounter, Princess Seonhwa requested that a temple be built on the site. In another narrative, supported by evidence from engraved letters on a gold plate found within the stone pagoda on the premises, the queen is noted to be the daughter of a man with the surname Satakjeokdeok 사탁적덕, not King Jinpyeong. In any event, it is within reason to conclude that these two extant, albeit contradictory, accounts both point to a proactive role played by the Baekje royal house in catalyzing the Mireuksa project.
And Mireuksa was not simply a ‘project’ that aimed at perfecting piety but also one that furthered a certain political agenda. More specifically, it would not have been merely a coincidence that Iksan was singled out as the site for construction of the temple. Indeed, during the latter part of his reign, King Mu embarked on a project to create a new capital at Iksan, completing construction on both Mireuksa and a royal palace a short distance to the southeast.
Looking through the lens of a historian, such a seemingly enigmatic move on the part of King Mu could be interpreted as a strategy to enhance his own royal authority. Especially in Korean history, it was standard procedure for the moving of the national capital to accompany major sea changes in political hegemony. Such patterns are most lucidly manifest during periods of dynastic transitions, as one would be hard-pressed to find a single case in Korean history in which a newly-established dynasty did not undertake the arduous process of calculating the political, geographical, and geomantic merits of a new capital in lieu of complacently sticking with the established venue of the ancien régime. The accompanying disruption would ultimately be virtuous in advancing challenged royal authority, as the entrenched power base of old elites would be replaced by a new paradigm of political power led by the king in the new capital and royal initiative in spearheading gargantuan national projects would be highlighted over erstwhile monarchical hebetude. Considering the specific historical contours of the Baekje royal house, which had consistently hemorrhaged political capital for centuries, and the personal proclivities of the reformist King Mu, who remained perpetually trigger-happy vis-à-vis the instigation of war and creative construction throughout his reign, that the Iksan project constituted such an ambitious gambit for consolidating royal power seems obvious.
Alas, whatever specific goals King Mu may have harbored for national revival were not to be, as Baekje would fall abruptly just two decades after his death in 641 AD. In a lightning offensive, a combined Silla-Tang offensive, involving 180,000 men, snuffed out the seven-hundred year old dynasty in one fatal combined offensive from the east and west. The dynastic revival that lasted through King Mu’s reign and, contrary to conventional wisdom, through the reign of his successor, the much vilified King Uija, was brought to naught in the matter of a few weeks. Granted, the blitz offensive, which left most of Baekje almost completely unscathed, and the half baked occupation that followed it allowed room for a spirited three year Baekje revival movement to momentarily recover large swathes of the fallen dynasty’s territory. However, the original Baekje Kingdom (there were other self-proclaimed successor states, including Gyeon Hwon’s 10th century Later Baekje Kingdom) had been thoroughly extinguished. Even after Baekje’s destruction in 660 AD, however, Mireuk Temple’s history as a major piece of Buddhist architecture on the Korean peninsula continued. Silla, a kingdom with comparable emphasis on Buddhism, expanded Mireuksa after completing the unification of the three kingdoms in 668 AD. It is thought that the temple continued operations as a religious institution until the 17th century.
Of course, in the present-day, the original Mireuksa temple no longer exists, its ruins sprawling over an verdant expanse near the foot of Mireuksan 미륵산 Mountain. The site, almost an hour bus ride away from Iksan Station, is a quite a far ways off from the urban areas that currently comprise modern-day Iksan-si. It was August 2019 when I visited the site for the first time, just a few months after the completion of a major two-decade long restorative project saw the Mireuksa Seoktap 미륵석탑, the oldest and largest stone pagoda in East Asia, finally escape the haphazard cement casing it received during a notoriously botched ‘restoration’ project inflicted on the landmark structure in 1915.
During my visit, Iksan was still held captive by heat, and the late summer air, enriched with a spell of moistness and precipitation, seemed to inspissate into a viscid pool of heavy-laden humidity. My chosen transport was a Iksan-si general bus circuit which left Iksan Station towards the northeast. As the station is located at the far southern rung of the city, a trip north through the city in an open-window bus is conducive to some intimate views of the urban landscape.
The overall landscape was typical of a mid-size city in an agriculturally fecund locale, resembling an island of dun colors floating in a sea of aggressive green. Just outside the immediate city limits, the overflow of organic growth, inflamed and emboldened by recent precipitation, spilled in billows onto the dark road leading to the agrestic sanctum of exurban Iksan in which Mireuksaji rests. As the bus continued to incise the hyperbolic masses of green, the countryside foliage continued to wax in intensity, being interrupted only intermittently by the presence of a handful of farm buildings and rural lodges.
Mireuksaji was a good thirty-minute ride past the outer boundaries of urban Iksan. Once inside the site grounds, the temple site seemed to sprawl endlessly in a breathtaking expanse of before the venerable presence of Mireuksan Mountain. Within what seemed to be sea of grass, two groves of trees surrounded two small pools of water, ponds that were added to the temple grounds during the United Silla period. Wide sand walkways, supplemented with long woven rugs to prevent slippage in rainy weather, cut sharply through the mass of greenery, focusing one’s attention on two massive stone pagodas and the looming mountain behind it.
From this central viewing point, the sand road on the left continued for a short while before splitting, with one artery jutting sharply towards the twin pagodas. With each step forward, the stone edifice of the original Mireuk Seoktap on the west side of the temple came into sharper focus, its chiseled grays contrasting sharply with the fluid foliage that formed its backdrop. Soon, the second pagoda in the east, reconstructed in its entirety only in 1993, came into view, flaunting, with its newly-cut granite and complete nine-tier composition, a completeness that was conspicuously missing in its ancient counterpart. Both stood like an inverse chronological progression, with the newer structure ironically standing in as a proxy for the temple’s polished past and its western counterpart testifying to the dotage inflicted by the intervening centuries leading up to the present.
At the corner of the road and just to the west of the western pagoda was an array of cut granite stones that had been excavated from the site. A few dozen were singled out to be filed in a 기역 L-shaped row, starting with some handsome corner pieces for the tiers of a stone pagoda.
A little down the row were a menagerie of unique pieces, such as the parts of a stone lamp that originally lit the temple’s expansive courtyards. All stones other than these selected few, however, were placed together behind this initial row. The stones placed in this back area were truly massive, with what looked to be stylobate and other inner supporting stones clearly among the mix. Of course, much of the original structure, with its wooden construction, could not and did not survive the passing of time. Therefore, what survived would have been made of stone, like the ones currently populating Mireuksaji’s grass fields, or possibly metals, like the Baekje-era artifacts dwelling in various museums across Korea.
The west pagoda is, as mentioned, an original structure on site that suffered a truncation in stature after structural collapse caused several tiers to be lost to history. As a result, the remaining structure has only six tiers, with the bottom two now fully restored after the most recent restoration. By the time of my visit, the cement support of the Japanese colonial-era restoration was nowhere to be seen, replaced by the eaves of the individual tiers.
To the immediate east of the Mireuk Seoktap was the Geumdangji 금당지 or “main hall site”. The main hall, which appears to have been originally built behind a large wood pagoda, was located in the central courtyard and was where the image of Buddha was enshrined. In fact, each of the three original courtyards seemed to have a geumdang and a pagoda, with the two stone pagodas serving as the pagodas of the west and east courtyards. In front of the central geumdang was a sizeable stone base, onto which was carved the image of a eight-leaf lotus flower, a common motif in Baekje-era cut stones and roof tiles. The base once supported a stone lantern, also known as a 광명등 (lit. lantern of bright illumination), which is thought to have represented the luminescence of the Buddha himself. The stone lantern would have been placed in front of the main halls of each of the three courtyards and behind each of the courtyards’ respective pagodas.
The second pagoda was just east of the central courtyard. This so-called east pagoda was imposing in scale, with nine reconstructed granite tiers (modeled on the extant west unit pagoda) and even a recreated 상륜 相輪, or ornamental Buddhist finial affixed to the roof stone.
Four weighty bronze double-doors were posted facing each of the four directions. Unlike the Mireuk Seoktap on the west courtyard site, access to the east pagoda itself was not blocked off. Upon stepping into the pagoda and looking out the entrance, I was greeted to some striking views of a powerful Mireuksan Mountain. Every so often, the bronze trinket bells affixed to the corner eaves sounded ethereal chimes in the soft breeze.
National Iksan Museum 국립익산박물관
As one of eight archaeological sites that collectively comprise the Baekje Historic Areas UNESCO World Heritage Site, Mireuksaji continues to undergo projects aimed at heightening its cultural capital, including not only the aforementioned restorations of the original Mireuksa Seoktap and of the west unit pagoda but also the addition of an on-site museum, the National Iksan Museum 국립익산박물관 (which recently underwent a title promotion from a “provincial museum” to a “national museum” with the designation of UNESCO World Heritage status to Iksan’s Baekje sites). Located just a few steps west of the main temple site, the museum was still undergoing a transformative expansion and renovation of the museum following its promotion to “national museum” status. The existing main museum building was nevertheless open for viewing during my visit.
Inside the museum, the first thing that greeted visitors past the main entrance and reception hall was a massive small-scale replica of the entire Mireuksa Temple during the Baekje Kingdom. Even as a replica, the formidable scale of the temple, seen in its entirety, was a truly breathtaking sight. Mireuksa’s original trio of pagodas towered erect like the tip of a trident, the massive stone monuments that I had just witnessed being dwarfed by the temple’s gargantuan central pagoda. Height was not the temple’s sole virtue, however, as the temple grounds spanned almost the entirety of the vast area comprising the mountain base I had traversed outside the museum.
사리 舍利 or śarīra are crystalline or pearly bead-like objects that are said to be found in the ashes of Buddhist luminaries and that are extolled as relics. The Baekje Kingdom’s exquisite śarīra urns, bijou pieces fashioned from gold (among other materials) sporting byzantine masses of engraved patterns on their delightfully effulgent surfaces, were exhibited (and highly advertised) by the National Iksan Museum as astral artifacts in its collection. In 2009, during the pagoda restoration project, śarīra were found to have been stored inside a long untouched compartment of the Mireuk Seoktap in a peculiar matryoshka-style set of urns. The urn had three layers: an outer bronze urn, an inner gold urn, and a innermost glass vessel containing the śarīra itself. The urns on display at the museum were the two outer urns as seen below.
Other attractions in the museum included excavated pieces of United Silla pottery and Goryeo-era celadon (as mentioned above, the temple was in use through Korean antiquity and medieval history to the 1600s). The Goryeo exhibit included a display of intraregional maritime trade and cultural intercourse among East Asian countries (i.e. Korea, Japan, China), a common exhibit theme in many museums throughout East Asia.
Another display also highlighted historical comparison, but juxtaposed artifacts of differing time periods instead of regions. It featured a chronological display of roof tiles that showcased the progression of design of eave-edge tiles through various dynasties in Korean history from the Three-Kingdoms Period to the Joseon Dynasty.
There were also some more eye-popping pieces in the museum collection, including a wonderful representation of a Bodhisattva’s graceful hand fashioned during a Goryeo Dynasty steeped in the art and practice of aesthetic indulgence. In the next hall, a grand chimi 치미 or roof-end tile from the Mireuksaji site graced the tail end of the museum with its extravagant presence. The largest display in the hall, however, was the replica of the 목탑 木塔 (lit. wooden pagoda) that originally towered above Baekje-era Mireuksa. The adjacent object label noted in Korean that the pagoda is estimated to have been at least 40 meters in height, an astonishing feat for wooden construction especially in relation to its time-period.
Soon after my visit in August 2019, the expansion of National Iksan Museum was completed, with the building greatly modernized and the layout completely transformed. As with other things in human society, the contemporary mode of historical presentation and interpretation of any given era, however neoteric, is always subject to new changes and updates, and the transformation of the National Iksan Museum might just be yet another affirmation, albeit a very literal one, of that immutable fact.
Wanggung-ri Archeological Site and Museum 왕궁리유적/왕궁리유적전시관
Wanggung-ri is a remote administrative division of Iksan, the “ri” 里 denoting the smallest submunicipal level administrative division in modern-day South Korea. The “Wanggung” in Wanggung-ri is a direct reference to the Baekje royal palace that was built by King Mu on the site fourteen centuries ago (Mahan’s 마한 capital is also said to have been in the same locale, located immediately north of the current Wanggung-ri site). Situated southeast of Mireuksaji, the current archaeological site is actually closer to urban Iksan than Mireuksaji, as the larger administration unit that contains Wanggung-ri, Wanggung-myeon, borders the more urbanized Palbong-dong immediately east of the actual city of Iksan itself. Nevertheless, the site is still relatively distant, and it would take around forty-five minutes to reach the location by bus from Iksan Station.
Having already visited the site in the past, familiar sights started to greet me as soon as the city tour bus I was riding rolled through the parking lot. The museum building, with its characteristic cylindrical entrance hall, was waiting straight ahead while a broad side road branched out from the main path towards the actual ruins, which loomed in the distance. A stone plaque greeted all visitors, informing each of the significance of the site as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
I went to the museum first. The actual Korean name of the museum being the 왕궁리유적전시관 (lit. Wanggung-ri Relics Exhibition Hall), the exhibition is mostly dedicated to showcasing the myriad artifacts excavated from the Wanggung-ri site situated immediately outside of the building. A star piece of the collection is actually a rather-pedestrian looking fragment of a roof tile. Although a cursory glance would conclude that the much lionized tile differs little with the mundane selection of roof and eave-end tiles that fills several glass exhibits within the museum, a deeper look at a peculiar stamp design on the tile surface suggests otherwise. The roof tile is stamped with two characters 首府 수부, meaning “capital”. This tile fragment therefore constitutes archaeological proof that the environs outside modern-day Iksan-si were indeed meant to be the location of a capital city during the reign of King Mu. The single stamped tile displayed at the museum at the time of my visit was but one of several such stamped pieces that received widespread attention for their role in validating what was once just historical conjecture: Iksan as a Baekje-era capital city.
Other highlights of the exhibition hall included pieces from a system of baked-clay pipes that were found in the archaeological site and an exhibition dedicated to showcasing the excavated restroom areas, with efficient drainage systems, that are believed to have been a part of everyday life in the original Baekje-era palace. Still other exhibits were dedicated to recreating some of the physical features of the palace site, with a small-scale model of the garden-area ruins filling an inner hall of the museum.
The rest of the exhibition hall was dedicated to exhibiting various facets of the Baekje royal palace as well as its transition to a temple, which was used through most of the United Silla period. At the end of the museum was a gallery of old photographs pertaining to the modern history of the Wanggung-ri site and recent restorative projects on the site.
One photograph of a certain group undertaking the 1966 restoration of the 익산 왕궁리 오층석탑 Iksan Wanggung-ri Five-Story Stone Pagoda (National Treasure No. 289) was especially noteworthy. As the eyesore cement casing of Mireuk Seoktap faithfully stood witness to for a century, the sensitive and informed handling of historical treasures in the Korean peninsula was a truly infrequent phenomenon in the last century. The risible image of the Wanggung-ri restoration team undertaking the dismantling and restoration of the landmark pagoda while standing in unison on the disassembled structure’s base demonstrates how haphazardly even major historical restorations were often executed in the past. Nevertheless, the 1966 restoration project did yield bona fide successes, including the discovery of a long-buried stone stylobate supporting the structure. The project also yielded the discovery of yet another śarīra holding compartment (i.e. 사리장엄 舍利莊嚴) along with other invaluable items, the photographs of which were prominently displayed on one wall of the room. After absorbing these sights, I stepped back out into the main entrance hall, where a replica throne was prepared for visitors wanting to conduct their own photographic coronation.
Back outside, I finally headed to the actual Wanggung-ri site. A small sea of excavated roof tiles was laid in a square formation in front of the site entrance, apparently as a visual testament to the archaeological fecundity of the site. The main site itself featured a gentle incline constituting the tail-end of a hilly ridge jutting from Yonghwasan 용화산 Mountain. This humble hummock formed the base of what was once the Baekje-era palace, with the central portion of the original structure corresponding in location to a high point of elevation on the site. Several terraced inclines were in front of this central courtyard area, including an outer incline corresponding to the site of the palace front gates and southern wall. The clearly defined boundaries of the site, its walled demarcations having been fully excavated and identified, makes this place unique among Baekje palace ruins as the only one to possess known perimeter boundaries and a lucid internal layout.
Although extensive research and excavation field work was conducted on the site since the last century, written evidence pertaining to the site’s original purpose and possible transition to a temple before the fall of the Baekje Kingdom is conspicuously lacking. However, the site was long surmised by outside observers to possess historical significance due to its lone stone pagoda, which, along with the occasional exposed stone foundation, constitutes the only major physical structure currently on the site. The stone pagoda, which might originally have been a wooden 목탑 pagoda, has since been restored to its former appearance through the aforementioned 1966 restoration project and, unlike its Mireuksaji counterpart, bears no corporeal damage. Instead, it continues to tower in perfect form above the verdant terraces of the historical past like a solitary prophet, testifying to the glory of an elusive past.
Gazing upon the lone time traveler from a distance, I reflected on the dualities present in the site in the modern era, with digitally buttressed museum exhibits situated close beside millennial stone edifices. What an apt metaphor for Iksan and, on a larger level, modern-day Korea itself, where the rich tapestry of the past continually jostles, competes, and coexists with a thoroughly neoteric present.
Iksan is the historical nexus not just for the Baekje dynastic culture of antiquity or the 20th century rail industrialization on the Korean peninusula, but also in many ways for my own extended family. My family on my mother’s side is largely based in the Honam region. During those precious occasions when I was able to travel to Jeolla Province, they always were extremely welcoming of me, greeting my visits with open arms. It is thanks in large part to them that I was able to visit Iksan a total of four times in the last five years. In other words, it is largely thanks to them that I could write this piece.
Through this piece, I detailed the main sites comprising the “trains and temples” (i.e. modern industrialization and Baekje history) theme endemic to the entire Iksan plain. However, there are so many sites, whether historical or recreational in orientation, that exist outside of the thematic purview of “trains and temples”. Those places also represent a view of Iksan that I think is worth describing in length in a separate blog. Iksan part II will be coming soon.
