Gayasan

Gayasan National Park was declared on 13 October 1972 as the ninth national park in South Korea, straddling the provinces of North and South Gyeongsang, in the Sobaek range. Its name comes from the silhouette of the mountain, which recalls the head of a cow, hence also its old name of Udusan. Its two main summits are Chilbulbong, at 1,433 metres, and Sangwangbong, at 1,430.

Its most celebrated feature is the temple of Haeinsa, founded in the year 802 and the head temple of the Jogye order of Korean Seon Buddhism. It is one of the Three Jewel Temples of Korea and represents the Dharma, the Buddha's teaching. Since 1398 it has housed the Tripitaka Koreana: the complete Buddhist canon carved on some 81,350 wooden printing blocks between 1237 and 1248, in a collective effort undertaken to invoke the Buddha's protection against the Mongol invasions. It is the most complete collection of Buddhist texts preserved anywhere, and the regularity of its characters is such that it seems the work of a single hand.

In 1995 UNESCO inscribed the Janggyeong Panjeon, the depositories built in the fifteenth century to house the blocks, under cultural criteria (iv) and (vi): they are unique because no other historic structure was conceived specifically to preserve artefacts, and the ventilation and humidity control techniques used were centuries ahead of their time. The national park functions legally as a buffer zone for the cultural property. On its slopes there are also other significant Buddhist sites, such as Hongjeam, where the monk Samyeongdaesa lived in the seventeenth century, and the Hirangdae retreat.