In the 11th century, Buddhist monks built a temple among the trees in the Myohyang Mountains. A thousand years later it stands in the same place, with the same statues, the same frescoes and the same scent of incense.
The Bohyeon Temple, Pohyonsa in Korean, is one of the most important Buddhist shrines on the entire Korean Peninsula. It was founded in 1024 (other sources say 1042) and named after the bodhisattva Samantabhadra, whom Koreans call Bohyon. That is half a century before the First Crusade, a hundred years before the founding of Moscow and two centuries before Marco Polo.
Stone, wood and roof tiles are the very materials that were used here a thousand years ago. The same cedars and pines grow around the temple, the same granite from the Myohyang Mountains lies in the foundation, and the same wind sways the bell in the pavilion.
Bohyeon suffered greatly during the Korean War: American bombing destroyed a significant part of the buildings. But the temple was restored with exceptional precision, following the original blueprints and photographs and using traditional techniques. This is not a shoddy modern makeover but a restoration that does the original justice.
The temple houses a collection of 80,000 wooden blocks carved with Buddhist texts, each block bearing 22 lines of 14 characters. The Sokka Pagoda was built in the 14th century: 10 meters tall, 13 tiers and 104 bronze bells that chime in the wind. The Buddha statues are carved from wood and covered with gold leaf that has darkened over centuries of incense. The frescoes have faded with time but remain legible: scenes from the life of the Buddha, celestial beings, lotus flowers.
Buddhism in North Korea is a complicated subject. Officially the country has freedom of religion, in practice religion is controlled by the state, and Bohyeon today is more a museum than a working monastery. But its very existence is a fact: in a place where Juche ideology stands in for religion, an 11th-century Buddhist temple survives, not destroyed or rebuilt but preserved.
Carved wooden sculptures stand along the walls and guard the entrances: bodhisattvas with half-closed eyes, lokapala guardians with swords and spears, demons with bared teeth. The paint has grown dim with time, but the colors can still be read: red, green, gold, blue. The ceilings are painted with geometric patterns and floral motifs that repeat, yet no element is an exact copy of its neighbor. Dancheong, Korean temple painting, is an art that takes years to learn.
A separate pavilion stands near the entrance, an octagonal pagoda with a tiered roof, and inside it hangs a bronze bell from the 12th century, darkened by eight hundred years of rain and snow. A single strike of a wooden mallet produces a low, deep, resonant sound that fills the whole space and spreads in waves across the courtyard, across the mountains, through the forest and along the river. It fades slowly, over a minute, two, three. For a thousand years this sound has carried over the Myohyang Mountains, and today the bell, the sound and the mountains are still the same. Only the people are different. Or are they the same after all?
The air smells of incense, the silence holds, and beyond the temple walls the wind rustles in the treetops. The thought comes not right away but an hour later, when you are sitting on a stone step at the entrance and looking at the mountains: the monks of Bohyeon made a choice too, only the reverse of Bucher’s. Bucher stayed in captivity to save his men, and the monks stayed in the temple — under Goryeo and under Joseon, under the Japanese occupation and under the bombing, under socialism and under Juche. Regimes changed and the monks remained; the temple burned and they rebuilt it; ideology forbade and they carried on. A thousand years of the same choice: to stay. The bronze bell of the 12th century, darkened by time, hangs in its separate pavilion, and a single strike of a wooden mallet produces a low, deep, resonant sound. It spreads in waves across the courtyard, across the mountains and through the forest, and fades slowly, over a minute, two, three. For a thousand years this sound has carried over the Myohyang Mountains, and today the sound, the bell and the mountains are still the same.
Around the temple stand the very mountains that hide 117,000 gifts underground, in a bomb-proof bunker. The contrast is deafening: a bunker with Stalin’s armored automobiles and a Buddhist temple with wooden statues a thousand years old; ideology reinforced with concrete and faith built from wood and stone. Two worlds lie in the same mountains, in the same country, a short walk from each other.
This is North Korea, a country where nothing fits together and everything coexists side by side: a subway-bomb shelter with crystal chandeliers, an American ship held captive by a museum, a beer bar in an ideological state and a Buddhist temple in an atheist country.
Buddhism in North Korea raises more questions than it answers. Freedom of religion is officially enshrined in the constitution, while in practice religion is controlled by the state. The Korean Buddhist Federation exists, but its role is more diplomatic than spiritual. There are monks at Bohyeon, only a few, and their status is unclear: monks, museum staff, or both at once.
Yet the very existence of this temple is a fact. In a country where Juche ideology replaces religion, where portraits of the leaders hang in every home, where “the great leader” is equal to a higher power, there stands a thousand-year-old Buddhist temple with a 12th-century bell and 80,000 wooden blocks, each one bearing a sacred text carved by hand.
No one destroyed it or turned it into a museum of ideology: it stands just as it stood a thousand years ago, as if no ideology surrounded it at all and the Buddha were above politics.
Every day of this journey brings cognitive dissonance: a subway-bomb shelter with crystal chandeliers, an American ship held captive, 117,000 gifts beneath a mountain, empty boulevards with traffic controllers, a beer bar and a Buddhist temple in an atheist state. Nothing fits together, and everything coexists side by side.
And so it goes every day: a subway with chandeliers and armored doors, a spy ship held captive, 117,000 gifts under a mountain, empty boulevards with traffic controllers, a beer bar and a Buddhist temple. Nothing fits together, and everything coexists side by side.
The value lies precisely in that dissonance, because no book, no film and no blog can convey the feeling of North Korea. This is not something merely interesting to read about, it is something you have to live through physically: to see with your own eyes a 330-meter pyramid standing in the center of a city and yet not existing on any map; to hear with your own ears a thousand-year-old bell humming over the mountains that hide a bunker with Mao’s armored train; to feel it through your skin and your gut, that place inside you that answers both “something is wrong here” and “something here is extraordinary.”
Both reactions are right, both are honest, and both are yours.
