Gilt-bronze Future Buddha

[Traveler]
We are now standing at a huge gilt-bronze Buddha, the main landmark of Beopju Temple. It measures 33 meters in height, and is known as the tallest statue of its kind in the world. Its construction required a large amount of time and energy, all the more so because it is the Future Buddha. The hand gesture shows that he will help people dispel their fears and realize their wishes.

This statue of the Future Buddha had a long history filled with many twists and turns before it acquired its current golden appearance. The Buddha was first erected as a bronze figure 1,200 years ago, when Buddhism was enjoying its prosperous heyday in Korea. This Buddha continued to display its imposing figure for more than 1,000 years. However, 150 years ago, a powerful politician decided to pull it down and use the bronze to mint coins, because he believed it would help the country overcome the financial crisis of that time. The statue was then restored as a cement work in 1939 by a local sculptor who hoped the Future Buddha would help liberate his country from the oppression of the Japanese colonial rulers. Unfortunately, the statue began to sustain damage before long and had to be transformed into a new bronze work. The bronze had to be gilded later on to prevent it from rusting. The thickness of the gold foil used for the gilding is only 0.003 millimeters, but the whole statue required as much as 80 kilograms of gold in total.

Why did the Korean people of more than one thousand years ago want to build such a big Buddha statue? According to a local legend, the Shakyamuni statue was 4 meters tall. It’s because his followers in later periods wanted to express their admiration for him by making his statue larger than life size. Some also wanted a taller Buddha because it would help him look farther and guide more creatures to the right path. Their decision may have been proved right because quite a few travelers visit the temple to have a look at this tall, imposing Buddha.