The Buddhist Temple ‘Ghak Won Sa’ for the Unification of Korean Peninsular

Korean peninsular was divided into 2 countries South and North after liberation from the colonial rule of the Japanese imperialist. The northern part of Korea was controlled by Soviet Army and the U.S. Army entered into the Southern part of Korea in 1945.

Naturally the communists seized the political power under the protection of Soviet Russia, on the contrary the southern part of Korea had experienced extreme confrontation between the Liberals and the Communists. At that time the U.S Army thought the Soviet Army as a their alliance.

The Southern part was finally succeeded in making a free government and the Northern part had built the communist government in1948. It meant that there existed 2 governments in one nation.

Korean Peninsular became a sacrifice goat of the Cold war. Stalin and Mao tried to seize the full control over the Korean peninsular. They ordered Kim Il Sung break a war on South Korea. At that time, the U.S. government declared that they would not protect South Korea and Taiwan.

With this news, Kim Il Sung attacked the South Korea in June 25th 1950. More than 2 million civilians were reported to be killed in this war. More than 10 million people separated with their family.
Finally the U.S. Army intervened and more than 35,000 American soldiers were killed in action.

All these sacrifices were the result of the declaration of the US government not to protect the South Korea and Taiwan. If the communists were succeeded in Korean War, next objective would be Taiwan.

Along with this historical background, the Unification became the most important homework to Korean.

Some day one of my colleague told me that there was the temple with a desire for the Unification of Korean Peninsular. So we decided to look around the temple.

It was a warm winter morning. It snowed the day before when we went over the temple.
This temple was located in Cheon An city, the middle area of South Korea.

The temple was very large. The main building was the biggest among the Buddhist building in Korea in my guess.
But what attracted me was not a magnificent scale but falling water from the eaves.

The snow melting water was falling. It was so beautiful. I tried to take the photos. But it was not so successful my camera lens was not to powerful to catch a moment of feeling. I need a better lens.

Anyway I entered into the main building and took some photos of Buddha statues and Drawings.

The main purpose of this visiting was looking at the biggest bronze Buddha statue in East Asia.

This statue has 15m heights.

How did they made this large bronze statue ?

It is said that this biggest bronze statue and the biggest main building were dedicated to Buddha for the Unification of Korean Peninsular.

I missed to tell the size of the main building.
But the photos below would explain how the size of this main building was.
The name of this thing is Yong chi meaning the teeth of dragon.
The size of Yong chi is about 2 or 3 times bigger than me

This Yong chi was put on the top corner of the roof.

I took some photos of the statue. You can estimate the size of the statue with people standing and praying.

I turned around the statue praying for the unification of Korean peninsular.

Up until now, I have been searching the old historical spots.

But that day, I realized that this day was also a part of history.

Moments become a history.