After centuries lost to history, a revered Korean statue returned home — only to leave again. In its passage, it carries the weight of memory, loss, and the fragile hope for reconciliation.
The Goryeo Gilt-Bronze Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva Statue Returned to Buseoksa Temple in Seosan (Yonhap)
SEOSAN, South Korea, April 29 (Korea Bizwire) – In the quiet foothills of Seosan, beneath the soft breath of spring winds, a golden figure waits to depart once more.
For months now, thousands of South Koreans have made their way to Buseoksa Temple, some traveling across the country, others from neighboring towns, to pay homage to the Goryeo-era Gilt-Bronze Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva.
After nearly 650 years lost to history — seized by pirates, entangled in legal battles, and returned only briefly — the statue will soon leave again, this time by plane, bound for Japan.
In an age saturated with political headlines and shifting alliances, it is easy to forget the quieter, more enduring wounds between nations — and how those wounds are sometimes embodied not in treaties or disputes, but in a single object of devotion.
Hoping for the statue’s return, elementary school children wrote heartfelt letters, expressing earnest wishes such as, “Please come back to our country.” (Yonhap)
The Bodhisattva’s farewell ritual will unfold over the coming weeks. On Buddha’s Birthday, May 5, the final public viewing will conclude, closing a ceremony that drew over 40,000 visitors.
Then, on June 10, monks will gather to perform a solemn Songbul Uisik, a sending-off rite for a figure many here have come to see not simply as a statue, but as a fragment of themselves — an echo of a homeland wrested away and now, reluctantly, returned.
For the temple’s head monk, Venerable Wonwoo, the departure is bittersweet. “From a broader perspective, cultural heritage belongs to all humanity,” he said. “We hope that its value can be shared, not owned.”
Yet efforts to hold onto even a shadow of the statue have met resistance. A request to perform a three-dimensional scan and create two full-size replicas — one for research, another to be regilded and enshrined — was rebuffed, with Japanese authorities citing copyright concerns.
In a world where even sacred objects are entangled in legal frameworks, the rights of history remain negotiable.
Buseoksa Gilt-Bronze Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva Statue Miniature Sales Project (Yonhap)
This dispute is but the latest chapter in a much longer story. Taken during an era of violent raids, the statue embodies a fraught legacy of conquest, loss, and uneasy reconciliation. While courts have ruled for its return to Japan after an 11-year ownership battle, the human emotions surrounding it — grief, anger, reverence — resist such clean conclusions.
Buseoksa’s monks and local leaders have responded not with protest, but with projects of remembrance. Plans are underway for a memorial park honoring Korean ancestors killed during the 16th-century Japanese invasions, including the symbolic return of soil from mass graves known as the “ear and nose tombs.”
Miniature replicas of the Bodhisattva will be sold to fund future cultural repatriation efforts, with proceeds supporting a broader movement to reclaim heritage scattered across the globe.
In Asan, a modest town in South Chungcheong Province, a Memorial Museum for Repatriated Cultural Assets will open its doors in June, exhibiting over 400 recovered artifacts. It is a quiet declaration that some things — memory, meaning, belonging — are not so easily uprooted.
As visitors file through Buseoksa Temple in these final days, bowing low before the Bodhisattva, it is clear that they are offering something more than prayers. They are offering witness.
Even as the statue prepares to leave once again, a part of it, and what it represents, will remain — rooted not in soil or stone, but in the fragile, enduring memory of those it leaves behind.
Lina Jang (linajang@koreabizwire.com)
