Gimsaengsa Temple Site, Chungju

Gimsaengsa Temple Site is where Kim Saeng (711–791), a renowned calligrapher of Silla, founded a temple in his later years. Kim Saeng was born in 711, the tenth year of King Seongdeok, into a poor and humble family, showed skill in calligraphy from an early age, and continued to wield his brush without rest until he died at the age of eighty in 791, the seventh year of King Wonseong. Many long dressed stones lie around the site, and fragments of stone pagoda components, roof tiles and ceramics are scattered about; so much roof-tile and brick debris has been excavated here that the place came to be called the 'roof-tile field'. Records in the Susan-jip's account of the reconstruction of Gimsaengsa and in the Sinjeung Dongguk yeoji seungnam confirm that Kim Saeng practised dutuhaeng, a form of ascetic religious discipline, at Bukjinae — the northern ferry crossing of Yeseong — that is, at Gimsaengsa in its present location. In addition, on the ridge beam of the main hall of an old tile-roofed house that stood here until a few years ago, four ridge-end tiles inscribed 'Geollyung eulmi (1775)' were found, together with a flat roof tile inscribed with the fifty-first year of the reigning monarch, an eulmi year, Chungju, Chungcheong-do. Judging from the recovered artefacts, the temple is thought to have been founded in the Silla period and to have flourished greatly during Goryeo; the site of a Joseon-period house remained here until recently, and in 1979 two buildings stood in a 'ㄷ'-shaped, U-shaped arrangement. On the riverbank west of the temple site stands the Gimsaeng Embankment, said to have been built by Kim Saeng, constructed of natural stones to prevent soil erosion by the river and to create level ground for the temple. Stones some 40–50cm long remain stacked to a height of 3–4m, but the embankment is now submerged by the Chungju Dam and its traces are difficult to find.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Chungju, Chungbuk

Designation

Provincial Monument · 시도기념물