Tomb of King Munmu, Gyeongju

Munmu unified the Korean peninsula in 676 and died five years later. He left instructions: burn my body, in the Buddhist way, and put what is left in the East Sea, and I will become a dragon and guard the country against Japan. His son did as he was told. The rock two hundred metres off this beach, with a cross-shaped channel cut into it and a pool at the centre, is where the ashes are said to have gone. Whether there is anything under the flat stone in the pool has never been settled; it has not been lifted. What is certain is that the site was treated as a royal tomb from the start. Two kilometres inland the same son built Gamunsa, a temple whose main hall had a channel under the floor so the dragon could come in from the sea, and a pavilion, Igyeondae, on the hill from which the rock can be seen. The temple is gone but its two great pagodas stand. At dawn the rock is silhouetted against the sunrise and the beach fills with photographers and, on the first of January, with crowds. The rest of the year it is a fishing village.

Original Text

Where it is

Region

Gyeongju, Gyeongbuk

Designation

Historic Site · 사적