Daeungjeon Hall of Unsusa Temple, Busan

The Daeungjeon Hall of Unsusa Temple in Busan has been confirmed, from two ink inscriptions found on the ridge purlin during a full dismantling and repair of the building in 2013, to have been begun in 1647 and completed in 1655. It is an elegant gable-roofed hall with columned bracket sets (jusimpo), three bays wide and three bays deep. All fourteen columns — eight eave columns and four tall columns around the perimeter, plus two further tall columns flanking the altar inside — stand on natural stone bases and are gently tapered and round in section. At the base of the corner columns, circular stone piers rise to about half the column height to support the wooden columns above, a feature also found in many buildings of the Dongnae area of Busan, such as the Daeungjeon Hall and Ilju-mun Gate of Beomeosa Temple, reflecting the region's more frequent typhoons and heavier rainfall compared with inland areas. In its frame, the interior follows a one-tall-column, five-purlin structure and the sides a two-tall-column, five-purlin structure, while the bracket sets, which reveal the building's date, are earlier in style at the rear than at the front. The plain wing-shaped bracket arms (salmi) and jointing method at the rear are of a kind seen in mid-Joseon architecture, matching those of the Daegwangjeon Hall of Sinheungsa Temple in Yangsan and the Daeungjeon Hall of Beomeosa Temple in Busan, whereas the front was later altered to more decorative bracket sets with elaborately shaped salmi, similar to those of Banhwaru Pavilion at Dongnae Hyanggyo and the bell pavilion of Beomeosa Temple — a clear demonstration of how a jusimpo/ikgong-type building, with bracket sets only above the columns, changed under the influence of dapo-style architecture, which also sets bracket sets between the columns. In a typical ikgong-style building the first wing-shaped bracket is inserted into the column head below the cap-block, but here it is instead built up above the cap-block, a distinctive feature found only in this hall. The two ink inscriptions on the ridge purlin are themselves a valuable source for the study of the region's Buddhist architectural history, as well as containing a wealth of architectural information. Although its doors and windows, ceiling and dancheong (decorative colour painting) have since been replaced or altered, the basic structure retains the form it took at its original construction in 1655 and its repair in 1771, and the four surviving murals in the building, including an ink painting of bamboo, are presumed to date from its founding or from the eighteenth-century repair, attesting to its antiquity. With its history firmly established by the inscriptions, the Daeungjeon Hall of Unsusa Temple stands as the oldest wooden building in the Busan region and a rare and valuable piece of Buddhist heritage through which the changes in Buddhist halls from the mid-Joseon period onward can be closely traced, giving it great architectural and historical value as a state-designated heritage item (treasure).

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Sasang-gu, Busan

Designation

Treasure · 보물