Gyeongju

Gyeongju's story begins around 57 BC with the founding of Saro, a small state on the Gyeongju plain that grew into Silla, one of Korea's Three Kingdoms. Its rulers were buried under earth and stone mounds inside the town itself, a practice that left the wooden-chamber tombs almost impossible to rob and so preserved the gold crowns, belts and glassware now in the museum. Buddhism was adopted in 527, reshaping the city with temples and pagodas.

Allied with Tang China, Silla defeated Baekje in 660 and Goguryeo in 668, then forced the Tang armies out, and Gyeongju became the capital of a unified peninsula for the first time. The city that followed, known as Seorabeol, was one of the larger cities in the world of its day, laid out on a grid, with Bulguksa and the Seokguram grotto built in the 8th century at the height of its wealth. Decline came through aristocratic feuding and rural revolt, and in 935 the last Silla king surrendered to the founder of Goryeo.

Afterwards Gyeongju became a provincial town, and its monuments decayed; Bulguksa burned during the Japanese invasions of the 1590s. Serious excavation began in the colonial period and expanded later in the twentieth century, when a national programme restored temples, dug the tomb parks and built the Bomun resort to receive visitors. The Gyeongju Historic Areas were inscribed by UNESCO in 2000, and building heights and roof styles in the centre remain tightly controlled so that the mounds stay visible above the town.

Gyeongju describes itself as a museum without walls, and its identity rests almost wholly on Silla. School trips have come here for generations, and the gold crowns, the stone observatory and the Buddha of Seokguram are among the most reproduced images in the country. Local festivals recall the Silla court through processions, ancestral rites and traditional music, and craft workshops keep up metalwork and pottery traditions traced to the period.

Buddhism remains a living practice rather than a heritage exhibit. Bulguksa and the smaller mountain temples hold daily services, temple stays are popular, and Golgulsa to the east teaches Sunmudo, a Buddhist martial art. Namsan's hundreds of carvings, pagodas and temple sites are treated as a sacred landscape, and many Korean visitors walk it as a pilgrimage as much as a hike.

The town is also Confucian in habit. The Choe clan house at Gyodong, whose family was known for centuries of restrained landholding and famine relief, is a standing example of local gentry values, and the Yangdong village north of the city keeps clan rites and head houses in use. Gyeongsang manners apply: speech is blunt and direct, hospitality is generous, and age and seniority govern seating, pouring and the order in which people speak.

About 250,000 people live in the wider Gyeongju city area, a figure that has been slipping for years, and the population is ageing as young people leave for Busan, Daegu and Seoul. Only part of that number lives in the historic centre; the rest are spread through suburbs, the industrial fringe and farming villages and fishing hamlets that reach to the coast some twenty-five kilometres east.

Tourism is the best-known industry but not the largest. Gyeongju sits between the industrial belts of Ulsan and Pohang, and car parts, machinery and metalworking factories on the edges of the city employ many residents, alongside the Wolseong nuclear power plant on the coast, a subject of long-running local debate. Agriculture continues on the plain, and the city is known for its pears, mushrooms and mountain vegetables.

Life in the centre is quiet and low-built by Korean standards: no tall blocks near the tombs, a strong seasonal rhythm of coach parties and school groups, and a rush of visitors in blossom season and on autumn weekends. Residents shop at the traditional markets and the newer commercial districts away from the monuments. Keeping a working city inside a World Heritage area is the persistent local issue, from building rules and excavation finds to traffic and parking.

Gyeongju's most famous food is a sweet one. Hwangnam bread — small, thin-skinned buns filled with red-bean paste, sold hot in stacked boxes — has been baked in the town since the 1930s and leaves in the luggage of most visitors. Chalboribbang, a glutinous barley cake with a similar filling, is the other local pastry, sold around the markets.

The standard sit-down meal is ssambap: rice and a grilled or braised main dish served with a broad spread of leaves, vegetable banchan and pastes for wrapping, which restaurants near the tomb parks have made their speciality. Sanchae bibimbap, rice with mountain vegetables, is eaten near the hill temples, and temple stays serve the vegetarian monastic cooking that leaves out garlic and onion. Beef from the nearby uplands appears as bulgogi and in soups.

Gyeongju beopju, a clear rice wine long brewed by the Choe family at Gyodong, is the local drink and one of a small number of traditional Korean liquors given protected status. Sweet rice punch and roasted barley tea accompany meals, and the coast east of the city supplies raw fish, crab and dried seafood to the town's markets. Cafés in the remodelled lanes beside the tombs have made their own speciality of teas and desserts built around red bean, barley and pine nuts.