Yecheon Gaesimsa Temple Site Five-story Stone Pagoda. Captured from the National Heritage Administration website.
On the 19th, Yecheon County in Gyeongsangbuk-do announced that the Gaesimsa Temple Site Five-story Stone Pagoda, built during the Goryeo period, has been upgraded to a National Treasure through a proclamation by the National Heritage Administration. This comes 62 years after it was designated as a treasure in 1963.
The Yecheon Gaesimsa Temple Site Five-story Stone Pagoda stands 4.3 meters tall with a construction area of 6.4 square meters. It is a stone pagoda from the Goryeo period that follows the style of Silla pagodas. The structure consists of a five-tiered pagoda body placed on a two-story pedestal and was confirmed to have been built in the second year of King Hyeonjong of Goryeo (1011), as evidenced by inscriptions on the base stone and the pedestal. The temple, Gaesimsa, where the pagoda originally stood, was built during the early Goryeo period, but no traces of the temple remain today, and the pagoda stands in the middle of a field.
The pagoda contains a total of 190 characters of inscriptions, making it the stone pagoda with the most inscriptions from the Goryeo period. Of these, 188 characters have been deciphered. The inscriptions record the period of the pagoda’s construction and the mobilization of the Gwanggun (a Goryeo military unit), providing insights into early Goryeo military systems. Additionally, these records offer a three-dimensional view of changes in local rural societies.