Jikjisa Temple

Jikjisa was founded in 418 by tradition and rebuilt after the sixteenth-century wars, and it is one of the larger monasteries in the north of Gyeongsangbuk, spread along a stream at the foot of Hwangaksan. The building people remember is the Cheonbuljeon, the thousand-Buddha hall: a room banked from floor to ceiling with a thousand small seated figures in white, each carved individually so that no two faces repeat, and among them one standing naked child figure - the tradition is that whoever spots it on first entering will have a son, which is the kind of detail that survives longer than doctrine. The compound also holds three Silla stone pagodas, a large hanging painting, and old buildings from the seventeenth-century rebuilding. The valley walk in from the gate is wooded and pleasant, and trails run on up Hwangaksan. It is a working head temple of the Jogye order.

What you actually see

• Cheonbuljeon - the thousand white Buddhas, all different.
• The hidden child figure - the one standing figure among them.
• The stone pagodas - Silla work in the courtyards.
• The valley approach - the wooded walk from the gate.

When to go

April to June and October. Autumn on Hwangaksan is the busy season. Weekday mornings are quiet.

Honest expectations

Ticketed, with a commercial street before the gate. Photography inside Cheonbuljeon is restricted. The buildings are seventeenth-century rebuilds and after, not originals.

Nearby

Hwangaksan's trails start here; Gimcheon is 12 km east.