The historic Naksan Temple is ablaze on Tuesday after a forest fire that started in Yangyang, Gangwon Province spread to the seaside./Chosun Ilbo
Korea lost a real gem today when Naksan Temple was destroyed today in a massive forest fire in Yangyang County. Luckily, nobody was hurt, and it appears the monks were able to save three of the temple’s treasures by moving them to one of the temple’s basements, but a tragedy none the less.
Naver.com has some cool photos of what the place used to look like, for posterity’s sake.
18 Comments
Hopefully the ?????????? can be preserved, as can the stone portion of the ????????. By the way, the latter seems quite unique: I don’t recall ever seeing a stone gate at a Buddhist temple. It’s a shame whenever a temple is lost to fire; fortunately, in this case, it was an accident.
Darn…. we can’t blame the Mongols or Japanese invaders on this one……
as things come, so they go - whenever buddhists or their properties are lost to the four winds, there is always the irony that, indeed, though we mourn, such loss is the very embodiment of the core teaching. i wonder about the ????????????. was she destroyed or did she just get a bit dark?
Who cares? Who wouldn’t mind seeing all of Korea go up in flames? Racist arrogant bastards.
I was onsite yesterday morning. As of 11:00am, Naksansa was considered safe. The wind was both strong and unpredictable though. I am going to stop at the temple on my way to work this morning and I may post some pictures online this evening.
Wow. That’s terrible. I was there last spring with the kids. Hopefully they get this fire under control soon.
And no, despite what some accuse us of, just because we waegooks discuss and complain about a lot of Korean issues doesn’t mean that we want the place to go up in flames.
This is really sad.
There is an issue behind all of this destruction too.
I was out in the country-side and noticed, once again that on Arbor Day (National Mountain Fire Day), many people go out to their family gravesites and do maintenance. Out where I was, many people have bought up fields that were once used for farming and have killed the land by putting their dead relatives there. Because of a pernicious, common superstition, many Koreans believe that a good gravesite must have the sun on it, thus they fell many trees that might surround such a place and leave them chopped up and piled up right on the edge of this grave. The result is a gigantic pile of kindling and a serious problem for Korean society. Out where I was, the countryside was haunted by the remains of those who were alien in body and in spirit, these people never lived on the land — they were just dumped there, often with a big marker. Their relatives just bought the land and put them there. If one goes out around Chusok to these graves, one can also see the trash and coca-cola cans left lying around these graves too. Such an honorable tradition, indeed.
As it is, there is also very little regulation as to this practice, thus it has reached epidemic proportions. Needless to say, guess *who* starts these fires every holiday . . . ? I hear tell that beginning next year, there will no longer be an “Arbor Day” holiday. I only wonder if anything will really change?
Beautiful temple. Visited it several times. A real shame.
Hate to see anything like this happen. I’ve never been to that one, but I’ve been to my fair share of temples in Korea and they are quite beautiful.
thats true about the trees. i climbed a mountain yesterday and noticed more than just the clearing, the trees all to the side of the grave crearing were all dead, which i’m almost certain were poisoned, because they were blocking the sun for the graves.
as for the temples. how many of the temples are original anyway? although they are made to look original, most have been rebuilt several times for one reason or another, including the evil japanese imperialists (credit where credit is due). so they can easily rebuild them again and in a few years they’ll be just the same.
Naksan-sa was all post-Korean-War construction, but it was very well-done, with the ponds gardens and all it was an extremely beautiful temple — this is really a terrible tragedy. The Main Hall was filled with hundreds of WOODEN sculptures by a national Master, Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and folk-deities and more, value beyond estimation; I hear that that Hall was destroyed, so the loss is very great.
I hope that the Hermitage on the rocky cliffs, specially sacred to the Gwanse-eum-bosal the Bodhisattva of Compassion, dramatically sitting right atop the Dragon-King’s Ocean-Cave, was spared the flames.
2 1/2 years ago I guided a big group of foreign ambassadors to stay there overnight, the Temple-Stay program, and it was a really wonderful experience, including watching the sunrise from Uisang-dae Pavilion. Damn.
Naksan-sa was one of Korea’s top-10 temples in tourism value. I’m sure they’ll raise a ton of money and reconstruct it, but it’ll be a long time before it’s again as nice and profound as it was…
???????? … seems quite unique: I don??t recall ever
seeing a stone gate at a Buddhist temple.
There are others, but mostly of modern construction,
and it is quite rare. Too fortress-ish for Buddhism…
David,
Good to hear from you. I sort of assisted in guideing the ambassadors (Dave, from Seoul, Gangwon Province sent people and Yangyang hired me and two others). The older, smaller hall on the higher level was destroyed; it had a few statues. The big hall with the hundreds of wood carvings by the turtle pond looked fine this morning.
Ah yes, Hi, Brian. You guys were very helpful on that trip.
I’m very glad to hear from you that the big Main Hall with the hundreds of wood carvings by the turtle pond was spared the flames; also to see in a photo on this morning’s paper that the special Gwanse-eum-bosal Hermitage on the rocky cliffs escaped. Those really were the two most important buldings, there, i guess…
Shame about the bell, tho. All commentators keep calling it an “ancient” bell, but wasn’t it from the Joseon era…?
This morning on CNN they said that an 1800-year-old temple had burned in South Korea. I kid you not. Nice to see Korean heritage getting any international attention at all, of course, but ya gotta wish they would get the facts anywhere close to correct…..
I and 11 others (mainly from England) were staying at the temple on the night the fire started. We had joined in the temple routines, including the evening ringing of the bell; little did we know that we would be the last people to hear its sound.
The smell of smoke woke me at around 1am and I got up to see if I could see anything; many of the monks were up and about. At 3am, we were asked to pack our bags be ready to leave; this we did just after 6:30 am. We moved on to Seoroksan National Park, thinking we had been moved just as a precautionary measure and could not believe what we saw on the television later that afternoon. Terrible shame.
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