What to do in Gyeongju, South Korea's historical city

In the forested hills around Golgulsa Temple, three hours down the coast from Gangneung, Master Hyunwoong is beginning his practice. Inhaling deeply, he centres himself, drawing his energy inwards, focusing his mind. His face goes blank. His body stills. A drum pounds out a pulse. Then, like a statue coming to life, Hyunwoong explodes into action: striking with his fists, sweeping with his legs, whirling, lunging, cartwheeling, tumbling, he delivers a performance that’s somewhere between acrobat, kickboxer and ballet dancer. After the flurry, he goes still again, eyes closed, hands clasped in prayer — except now his grey robes are a little more crumpled and there are beads of sweat on his brow.

Hyunwoong is a master of seonmudo, an ancient martial art practised in Korea for centuries. Though it isn’t as well-known as Korea’s national martial art, taekwondo, the two forms share much in common, combining movement with breathing, meditation and a spiritual practice rooted in Zen Buddhist teaching. I’ve travelled up to Golgulsa Temple, the main centre of learning for seonmudo in South Korea, to watch the public performance that’s held every afternoon in the training hall. Alongside these demonstrations, the temple runs a training school where Koreans — and many foreigners, too — come to learn the secrets of seonmudo.

“With seonmudo, one trains not only the body, but also the mind,” Hyunwoong tells me, as we sit down over a cup of roasted green tea after the demonstration is over and the hall is empty. “Like a tree, you must be rooted. Your thoughts must be clear. It involves movement, but it feels like meditation.” Now 37, he’s been training for more than two decades, having started at 14. It takes up to five years to become proficient at seonmudo, he says; a decade or more to become a master. “But even now, I still feel like a beginner,” he continues. “Every day, there’s something new to learn. With seonmudo, your training is never finished.”

This mysterious martial art is an echo of a much older side to Korea that endures in the hills and forests around Gyeongju. This historic town, a Unesco World Heritage Site since 2000, has been a stop on the KTX network since 2010. Around 2,000 years ago, it was the centre of the Silla kingdom, the dynasty whose dominion stretched across southern Korea for 992 years. Alongside Baekje and Goguryeo, it was one of the ‘Three Kingdoms’ that ruled the peninsula until the seventh century. Rich, cultured and powerful, the Silla kingdom was also unusual in that it was not patriarchal: among its 56 monarchs, Silla counted three yeouang (queens) during its history.

After the Three Kingdoms unified under Silla in the seventh century, there was a great flourishing of art and architecture throughout the Silla kingdom. After my visit to Golgulsa, I spend the afternoon wandering along the town’s avenues, lined with hanok houses, moats, gardens and palaces, as well as the oldest astronomical observatory in East Asia. Most impressive of all is the great, covered Woljeonggyo Bridge, flanked by ornate gatehouses at either end. Built in 760 CE and spanning 60 metres, the original bridge burnt down and was rebuilt in 2018; it’s the country’s largest wooden bridge and has become one of South Korea’s most popular Instagram spots.

The most obvious legacy of the Silla kingdom, however, are the domed tombs that rumple the landscape around the town like giant molehills. There are more than 100 of these tumuli dotted around the town. Built from stone and now covered by grass, they’re mausoleums not just for the bones of Silla’s royalty, but for the riches and treasures they wished to carry with them into the afterlife.

One of these tombs, Cheonmachong, was excavated in 1973. More than 11,000 artefacts were unearthed and the entire site has been turned into a fascinating subterranean museum. I step from the bright afternoon into the tomb’s inky darkness and find myself surrounded by the horde’s treasures, glittering like gems under the spotlights: golden crowns, bejewelled caps, suits of armour, lacquerware, ornamented swords, gilt-bronze sandals and, most famously, a birch-bark saddle emblazoned with a prancing horse. It’s this last design that gives Cheonmachong its name, which translates to ‘Heavenly Horse Tomb’ in English.

“Art and culture were so important to the Silla people,” explains Lee Su-min, a history guide with a special interest in Silla culture, who meets me inside the tomb to take me on a tutored tour of its Tutankhamun-like treasures. “Creating these artefacts was a way to show what a rich and powerful society this was,” she tells me. “It takes time, skill and money to make such beautiful objects.” Her favourite treasure, she says, is the Sacred Bell of King Seongdeok the Great, also known as the Emille Bell or Bell of Bongdeoksa. At 3.7 metres high, 2.3 metres across and weighing 19 tons, it’s the largest bronze bell in Korea, etched with designs of dragons, lotus flowers, apsaras (celestial beings) and lines of sacred scripture. “The tone of the bell is so beautiful,” Sumin says. “To me, it sounds like music.”

Some nine miles east of Gyeongju on the slopes of Mount Tohan stands another masterpiece of Silla’s golden age: Bulguksa Temple. Completed in 774, this is the head temple of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism. Six nationally important monuments are housed inside its walls: two stone pagodas, two gilt-bronze statues of Buddha and two pairs of bridges, Yeonhwagyo and Chilbogyo, and Cheongungyo and Baegungyo. “We are now moving between the human and the heavenly worlds,” Sumin says, as we ascend the staircase into the temple. Climbing the steps symbolically represents passage between the earthly and spiritual planes, she explains — a bit like progressing through heavenly passport control. “Welcome to the immigration site of the Buddha!” she adds, with a laugh.

It’s early evening and, apart from a few after-work worshippers, the temple is quiet. Prayer flags snap in the breeze. Incense offerings left by pilgrims smoulder around the cloister. Around the courtyard, stone lions and dragons stand silent watch; elsewhere, dokkaebi — tricksome goblins from Korean folklore — grimace from the stone. They’re here to guard the Hall of Great Enlightenment, where Bulguksa’s most precious treasure, a great golden statue of the Sakyamuni Buddha, sits in eternal contemplation. Worshippers file in, removing their shoes before kneeling in front of the Buddha to recite their sutras. On their way out, they’re given a nod farewell by the temple attendants, who then go back to sweeping up pine needles with their bamboo brooms.

A bell announces the temple’s closure, deep and sonorous, and we file out through its gate. Wind rustles through the pines. A broom swooshes on gravel. Cicadas hum in the twilight. If it weren’t for the snap of a mobile phone camera from a departing pilgrim, it’s a scene that wouldn’t have sounded all that different a thousand years ago.