[W Forum] Time Travel Back to Baekje Era

I spent the weekend visiting Iksan, Jeonju, and Gunsan. After being stuck at home due to COVID-19, the weekend events kept coming one after another, and I was even complaining about being tired. But at 7:50 a.m., as I boarded the tour bus leaving Seoul, I felt excited and happy this time. It was like going on a school picnic back in elementary school. Perhaps it was the joy of traveling with like-minded companions.

When I got off in Iksan, the sun was blazing. This area is a plain where it’s hard to find shade. I had brought an umbrella just in case because it was the rainy season, and it served well as a parasol. To escape the scorching sun, I rushed into a building?the National Iksan Museum. It used to be a public museum in Jeonbuk but was expanded and reopened as the National Iksan Museum on January 10, 2020. The exhibition of the sarira reliquaries excavated from the central pillar stone of Mireuksaji Stone Pagoda and artifacts from Mireuksaji allowed me to glimpse the traces of late Baekje culture. These relics exuded dignity even if they were brought straight into the 21st century.

Just as I thought my face would cool down in the bus’s refreshing air conditioning, we arrived in Jeonju. Jeonju Jeondong Catholic Church is a magnificent building where Byzantine and Romanesque arches and domes harmonize beautifully, with red and gray bricks finishing the exterior walls. Construction began in 1914, and the two crape myrtle trees (mokbaegilhong) in front of the nearby priest’s residence were full of beautiful pink flowers, blending wonderfully with the red brick priest’s residence. After leaving the church, I walked along the stone wall path surrounding Gyeonggijeon. Founded in 1410, Gyeonggijeon houses the portrait of King Taejo Yi Seong-gye, the founder of the Joseon Dynasty. Beyond the dignified and elegant walls, majestic old trees quieted the surrounding noise, creating a serene and cool atmosphere.

The next day, I headed to Gunsan. It was my first time visiting the city of Gunsan, which I had only known by name from textbooks during elementary, middle, and high school. On the bus heading to Jjaebo Wharf, a companion told me that we were passing over what used to be a railway. The railway was built between Iksan and Gunsan to serve as a hub for unloading rice and looted goods at Gunsan Port, which is surrounded by fertile farmland, and shipping them to Japan by boat. We headed to the floating bridge pier at Jjaebo Wharf. At the time, it was a larger port than Busan or Mokpo, mainly because it functioned as an advanced base for exploitation. It was a moment when the pain of the era was deeply felt. The large safe inside the former Japanese 18th Bank Gunsan Branch, now called the Gunsan Modern Art Museum, had a phrase written on its half-filled inner wall that bluntly conveyed the situation during the Japanese colonial period: "Until this safe was filled, our people had to remain naked and hungry."

At Chowoen Photo Studio, we took a group photo. The studio, a filming location for the movie "Christmas in August," displayed photos capturing the fresh faces of Han Seok-kyu and Shim Eun-ha, as well as the parking violation enforcement vehicle Shim Eun-ha used to ride. It was strange how just a few steps from the early 20th-century Japanese colonial period suddenly felt like stepping into 1998.

After returning to Seoul via the bus-only lane on the weekend highway, I called the colleague who prepared this trip to thank him. "It was a short journey, but it felt like we traveled through time?from 7th-century Baekje to the early Joseon period, then to the early 20th-century Japanese colonial era, and finally to the present day. Did you plan it with that in mind?" After a 40-minute long conversation, we concluded: "We traveled through time, 1,400 years in one night and two days."

Baek Hyun-wook, President of the Korean Women Doctors Association

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.