Jeongnimsa: The Temple Is Gone and One Pagoda Still Holds the Axis

A first visit to a ruined temple site is usually a disappointment. There is a wide floor of earth, some low stone outlines, and an information board.

Jeongnimsa is the site that can reverse that, because although the temple is entirely gone, the temple's plan is still readable. What makes it readable is the one pagoda standing in the middle of it.

Opening hours and location are on the place page for the Jeongnimsa site. This article is about what shape the temple had, how that is known, and what happened to the pagoda.

At a glance

One straight north-south axis
The middle gate, the five-storey pagoda, the main hall and the lecture hall stand on one straight axis, wrapped by a cloister.
The cloister is trapezoidal
Unusually, the cloister around the core is not square but trapezoidal, wider across the north.
Only two Baekje stone pagodas survive
This one and the pagoda at the Mireuksa site in Iksan.
It was once called the wrong thing
The Tang general Su Dingfang left an inscription marking the conquest of Baekje, and the pagoda was for a time wrongly called the Pyeongje pagoda.

A roof tile supplied the name

Start with the name, because what this temple was called under Baekje is not known.

A tile excavated at the lecture-hall site carries an inscription naming Jeongnimsa in the eighth year of Taiping, which is 1028, the nineteenth year of King Hyeonjong of Goryeo.

1028 — three hundred and sixty-eight years after Baekje fell. The reading is that in the Goryeo period a building was put up again on top of the Baekje temple's lecture hall and called Daejangjeon.

So the name "Jeongnimsa" is evidence that Goryeo reused the site, not a Baekje name. Sites taking their names from their last occupants is not unusual; here the circumstance happens to be written on a tile.

How to read a plan off empty ground

The main buildings are arranged with the central axis — middle gate, five-storey pagoda, main hall, lecture hall — running straight north to south, with a cloister wrapping the buildings.

That sentence is the instruction for walking the site. Stand where the south gate was and look north, and the pagoda, the main-hall platform and the lecture-hall platform fall into one line. Because the pagoda is actually standing on that line, your eye can join up where the rest of it went.

There is one exception. Unusually, the cloister around the core of the compound is not square but a trapezoid, wider across the north.

The axis is straight and the cloister is not. If you arrive expecting perfect symmetry, the plan looks wrong — and that irregularity is the characteristic feature of this temple.

The pond in front of the middle gate was revealed by excavation and has been laid out. The water you see is a reconstruction; that water was there is what the digging established.

Somebody else's writing on the pagoda

The pagoda is a National Treasure, and it carries a history no other pagoda has.

Su Dingfang, the Tang general who destroyed Baekje in alliance with Silla, left an inscription on this pagoda meaning "monument to the conquest of Baekje", for which it suffered being wrongly called the Pyeongje pagoda for a time.

A conqueror carved a victory text on another country's pagoda, and later ages took the pagoda's nationality from the carving. Baekje built it and Tang wrote on it, and the name followed the writing.

That has been corrected. It is the Five-storey Stone Pagoda at the Jeongnimsa Temple Site in Buyeo, designated a National Treasure on 20 December 1962 and dated to the late Baekje period, the seventh century.

A timber building made of stone

Up close it becomes clear why this pagoda matters.

Five storeys stand on a narrow, low single-tier platform. Pillar stones are set at the centre and corners of each face of the platform, and each storey of the body has a pillar at every corner, narrowing gradually from bottom to top in the entasis technique.

Giving a pillar entasis is a rule of timber building carried into stone. The thin, wide roof stones lift gently at their four corners, giving the pagoda a composed bearing.

The heritage authority is careful to say this is not mere copying. The narrow shallow single-tier platform, the entasis in the pillars and the thin wide roof stones follow the forms of timber architecture faithfully while producing something refined and inventive rather than imitative.

And it is one of only two surviving Baekje stone pagodas, with the one at the Mireuksa site in Iksan. Two. The other is at Mireuksa, and seeing both plots the whole of Baekje stone pagoda design as two points.

What Goryeo left, and what 1993 left

The second object on the site is not Baekje's.

A five-storey stone pagoda raised under Baekje and a seated stone Buddha made in the Goryeo period remain, and the building sheltering the stone Buddha was put up in 1993.

So three periods stand on the site today: a seventh-century pagoda, a Goryeo Buddha, and a 1993 shelter. Knowing which is which is how to look at the place properly.

The site was designated a Historic Site on 26 March 1983 and covers 61,449 square metres. In 2015 it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as one of the eight components of the Baekje Historic Areas.

Stand where the south gate was and face north. That is the spot where the pagoda, the main-hall platform and the lecture-hall platform line up. From the side it is just a wide yard; from the axis the temple's shape resolves at once. Then walk the line of the cloister and you will feel the north side being the wide end of the trapezoid.

Worth pairing with this

Frequently asked questions

Is Jeongnimsa the Baekje name?

No. A tile from the lecture-hall site names Jeongnimsa in 1028, the nineteenth year of King Hyeonjong of Goryeo. What the temple was called under Baekje is not known.

Why was it called the Pyeongje pagoda?

Because Su Dingfang, the Tang general who destroyed Baekje, left an inscription on it marking the conquest. Baekje built the pagoda, and it is now called the Five-storey Stone Pagoda at the Jeongnimsa Temple Site.

How many Baekje stone pagodas survive?

Two: this one and the stone pagoda at the Mireuksa site in Iksan.

What is there to see on the site?

The Baekje five-storey stone pagoda, a Goryeo seated stone Buddha, the pond in front of the middle gate revealed by excavation, and the building platforms along the north-south axis.

When was the shelter over the Buddha built?

In 1993, to protect the Goryeo-period seated stone Buddha.