When planning my trip to South Korea, I asked for suggestions of places not to miss from the only two Korean people I knew at the time, my Korean language tutor and the chap from my Kakao chat room.

There was one place that both of them put forward as worth the visit, especially as I like historical sites, and that was the city of Gyeongju.

I will simply assume here that you probably haven’t heard of Gyeongju before, so let us quickly acquaint ourselves. Gyeongju sits roughly three-quarters of the way down the country and very near the eastern seaboard. It is most famous for being the capital city of the kingdom of Silla between 57 BC – 935 AD (which, if you think carefully about it, is a heck of a long time) and also can be proudly described as a ‘museum without walls’, as I will hopefully be able to demonstrate for you.

I’m going to mix my days up here a bit though as I actually used Gyeongju as a bit of a base for my wider adventures. While here I explored Bulguksa Temple, possibly trespassed to see some dead kings, visited Busan, hiked two national parks, and also hiked in the Yeongham Alps where I met my first and only Korean hiking buddy, Jae.

For today, I am just going to lump together the things I did within the city proper and then cover Busan and my hiking in their own posts, though these things didn’t necessarily occur in that order.

Let’s start with the temple, shall we?

You obviously know by now that I like visiting temples, palaces, and places of that ilk, and given that Bulguksa temple complex is a UNESCO world heritage site, I figured it was worth scoping out.

To be honest, I’ll keep it brief and just give you the pictures. The day I visited the temple, it was swamped. I’m not good with crowds at the best of times, and I definitely like them even less when they are school groups of kids running about and shouting in a Buddhist temple complex when you are trying to be relaxed and respectful.

The complex is no doubt beautiful and with great examples of everything that is representative of Buddhist culture, but today I just wasn’t able to take it in properly. I did however pick up two small hand painted pictures to hang in Gary, so I suppose there is that. Also, I wanted to go and see the Seokguram Grotto (a cave temple) which you can usually walk to through the forest from the Bulguksa, but for some reason the path was blocked and it would have been an hour by bus to visit.

Deep breath. Cut my losses and went across the road to check out the shops which turned out was the best thing to do because….

My stomach is now rumbling just remembering eating this meal. This is tteokgalbi. The main element is the meat patty that is made from minced seasoned short ribs. It comes with the customary doenjang jjigae and assorted banchan including acorn jelly, marinated mini crabs (complete with shell), and other things I couldn’t identify but might have been root vegetables and maybe octopus?

I ate every single thing on the table. EVERY. SINGLE. BITE. By myself.

I have not a clue about the majority of the items I put in my mouth, but they were all mouth-wateringly delicious. And yes, just like I’d seen on TV, I crunched my way through mini crabs and they were fricken amazing.

This has probably been one of the best meals I have had here so far.

Feeling decidedly better about my day, I jump back on the bus and head back towards my accommodation to call it a short day (by the way, there are tons of buses servicing Gyeongju and you can pretty much jump on any of them and get where you need to be, most loop the main tourist sites).

As I am watching my map app to be sure I jump off at the right spot, I notice a green patch across the road from my stop labelled as some tombs. Well, it’s within walking distance of my room, why not just pop over and see them on route? So that what I did. All very innocently mind.

The site is clearly marked on the map and on the main road is this signpost, clearly indicating it is there.

I follow the arrow but I get just a smidge suspicious as the short roadway is pretty overgrown and then ends here.

Yes. This is a railway line. But again you can clearly cross it and walk through the little posts and into the tomb complex beyond and there are no signs at all indicating otherwise, or telling me I will be fined or go to jail for doing so.

And that’s how I found myself all alone walking through the tomb complex of King Seongdeok, the 33^rd ruler of the Silla kingdom, a rather nice chap who apparently implemented some good social welfare policies that assisted in stabilising the kingdom and led to the golden age of the Silla.

He has a nice sized burial mound which is surround by stone zodiac statues, though the information post tells me that one of them (the monkey, my sign) is apparently in the Gyeongju museum.

It’s a lovely warm afternoon; that perfect cosy temperature combined with a slight breeze. I am surrounded by trees and tall tufted grasses gently swaying to and fro. It’s quiet and peaceful. There is not a soul to be seen anywhere. Just me and my long dead royal friends.

Again, I would like to point out that there are proper professional signs next to these tombs. I walked around and read all three of them. It is obvious they are, or were, visited by the public. But for the life of me I can’t seem to find another entrance to this place. I keep expecting someone to show up and start asking me what I am doing there. But nope, it’s just me.

To be honest, I really wanted to sit down and spend the afternoon there. It’s one of the calmest places I ever been. I would have been happy to keep the King and his relatives company for a while. But now my nerves are getting the better of me. Seriously, why is there no-one here?

I take a deep breath and enjoy the serenity for a couple last moments, before retracing my steps across the railway line and back to my room.

Walking anywhere around Gyeongju you will get used to seeing this sight…

According to the city website, there are 36 royal tombs located in the city. I have to admit, there seem to be an awful lot more than that to me, you can’t go anywhere in the city and not be in sight of one it seems.

For a real feel of the city, my recommendation is to walk the Gyeongju City Course. My Airbnb host kindly gave me one of the brochures for the walk and so I took a full day and evening and walked all of the parts of the historic downtown.

A bit random, but I did start my walk off by getting to see a range of emergency service vehicles attending a car accident. Mostly I am surprised that this is the first road accident I have observed during my time in this country, given the appalling level of driving. No-one here was hurt by the way.

Anyway, I’ll spare you the full blow by blow account of my historic tour and just go with the highlights…

The main walk includes visiting the Daereungwon Tomb Complex, where you can actually walk inside one of the tombs that was excavated and see the little museum display they have erected inside of what was found. From what I could tell, only one tomb has ever been excavated – Cheonmachong – and that it has just given a rough idea of the construction and contents of the other tombs; the tombs have a main wooden burial chamber which is then covered by a stone mound. If my assumption is correct, I am glad that the other tombs haven’t been looted and raided, even for science or archaeology; I’m glad they are just in one piece.

The walk also passes by Cheomseongdae, a structure which is thought to be the oldest surviving astronomical observatory in Asia.

You will pass through a small folk village, complete with hanoks, where I might have slightly gate-crashed someone’s wedding (a woman in traditional dress was being loaded into this carrier and I had already wandered through and saw a table where people where handing over cash, which is a typical wedding thing).

You will also pass over Woljeonggyo Bridge, built during Silla times and then burnt down in the Joseon era. The current bridge was actually only finished being built in 2018, but apparently is historically accurate with a lot of research having been done to construct it.

There’s also the chance to pop in and visit the Gyeongju museum. Here I discovered an interesting pottery fact – bird shaped pottery for funerals were to allow the deceased to fly to heaven after death – and I come across a slightly familiar chap…

This is the missing monkey from King Seongdeok’s burial mound! For some reason it makes me smile to see him here, having just hung out with the King the other day. I also discovered this…

Apparently this is King Seongdeok’s bell, though not really if you read the story below. It is the largest extant bell in all of Korea and has a legend that goes with it, of which you’re just going to get the copied and pasted Wikipedia entry, but I can vouch for the story as I read it at the museum.

“The bell is commonly known as the Emile Bell in both Korean and English. Emile, pronounced “em-ee-leh,” is an ancient Silla term for “mommy”.
According to legend, the first bell that was cast produced no sound when it was struck. The bell was recast many times but with no success. The king that had wanted the bell cast died after a while and his young son took over with the help of the queen. The son carried out what his father had started but still he didn’t have any success. Later, a monk dreamed that if a child was cast into the metal, the bell would ring. The monk then took a child from the village and had her cast into the metal. When the bell was complete, the bell made the most beautiful sound when struck.”

Interestingly, there is a recording of the bell being struck which goes off every 10 minutes or so, and I can attest that it vibrates through your body and right down to your socks. It’s quite a startling sound to be sure.

This walk will take you most of the day if you meander like me and stop for food along the way. I got to tick off 2 new items – the 10 won hotteok (basically a pancake with cheese filling) is something everyone needs in their life, but the hotdog wrapped in deep fried pancake complete with sugar coating is probably one you can miss out on and not suffer too much.

I was advised to stick around in Gyeongju for the evening, because the city takes on a slightly different look by night. As the sun starts to set, let’s revisit some of those sights I’ve already seen, shall we?

Also lit up at night are the small hills of the old fortress walls and Gyeongju Donggung Palace and Wolji Pond, a secondary palace used by the crown prince and additionally as a royal banqueting area.

And if you were perhaps wondering where the citizens of Gyeongju like to hang out and have fun at night, I can tell you, it’s the palace. They go absolutely mental for taking photos of the illuminated palace and pond and of course, selfies.

Upon entering it is like tidal wave of people shuffling around the palace grounds, doing endless circuits of the pond trying to find the perfect shot for their Instagram. It’s quite the interesting cultural experience to observe to be sure.  

And there you have it. A very condensed look at the most historic areas of Gyeongju.

I’m not sure I’ve really done it justice here, but the city walk was the perfect way to get a feel of the historic elements of the area and I was able to see everything at my own relaxed pace.

Next time we are big city bound before taking a few more hikes…see you then!