Our first temple visit in Korea was to Yongju-sa, 용주사, built in 1790. Yongju, meaning Dragon jewel, was built after King Jeongjo dreamed a dream about a dragon holding a red jewel. The King took it as a sign that he needed to build a temple near the grave of his father, which he did.
Yongju-sa now only contains a few original buildings. Most of the site was rebuilt in 1994. The main building contains main dragon paintings which I was unable to get a picture of as they were holding prayers while we were there. One item to note, the site contains a 200+ year or tree that was planted at the temples dedication.
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| We were there late in the evening, so my lighting isn't very good. |
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| The Goryeo Dynasty Bell, cast in 854! |
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| The detail! |
We stopped at this temple on the way back from Osan AFB. I thought it would be nice to see something Korean, so looked in the travel book. The temple wasn't too far out of the way, so we decided to chance it. It was late in the day and our chance of getting stuck in rush hour traffic was high, why not see something besides the highway!
We ended up driving on this "two lane" road, which wasn't much wider than our car! It wound its way through a small village and around a park. There were a few tight spaces and speeding cars. There was a lot of pulling over and "sharing" the road. It was crazy. We got to the temple just before dark, and promised ourselves to find another, bigger way home.
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