The Heartfelt Dream of Reviving Baekje

The artifacts you see now is a stele engraved with an image of approximately one thousand Buddhas. In the center there are two Buddhist saints along with Buddha himself and then on top there are almost 1,000 Buddhists engraved. What did the people desire so ardently that they carved out one thousand Buddhas?

There are four lines of writing on each side of the central Buddha. The inscription says "In 679 A.D., 250 Baekje people pray for all the people that died with the collapse of Baekje and in the process of their revival movement, including the King of Baekje, his followers, and their ancestors."

After the collapse of Baekje in 660 A.D., people from all over the kingdom joined together in a movement to revive the country. They gathered an army with King Uija’s son as their leader and new king. The collapse of Baekje was merely a collapse of the central government, and with the exception of a few regions, the Baekje army spearheaded the revival movement and dominated the territory. They fought ferociously for four years and recovered hundreds of fortresses, but internal conflicts along with the continued oppression by the Silla-China alliance eventually defeated them.

Silla's king nominated the former noblemen of Baekje to high-ranking positions in an attempt to gain loyalty. This stele was discovered in a region where the revival movement of Baekje was especially active. The Baekje people of this region were not moved by Silla’s efforts at conciliation and made this stele in remembrance of their efforts to revive their country.