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The Seated Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva of Boseok Temple in Seosan, a 14th-century relic made during the late Goryeo period in Korea, is now at the center of international controversy over its ownership amid a history of presumed pillaging and known theft of the statue over its history between Japan and Korea. (courtesy of Busan Museum Director Jeong Eun-joo)

Celebrating its 693rd birthday this year, a particular Buddhist statue at the center of recent debate came into being at a particularly turbulent moment in Korea’s history.

In those days, Japanese plundering was rampant, as were exploitative practices by those who held power. For the masses, it was a struggle simply to survive. Many of them gave up their farmland to adopt a nomadic lifestyle.

During the late period of the Goryeo dynasty in the mid- to late 14th century, coastal regions of the Korean Peninsula were a lawless territory of Japanese marauding. Yet people did not give up hope for a “world of great harmony,” a Confucian idea of utopia. To withstand the turbulence of their times, they turned to community faith and sought a world of peace and equality through the Buddha’s grace.

At the Buseok Temple in the western city of Seoju (now Seosan), a part of Goryeo that now lies in Chungcheong Province, a beautiful gilt-bronze seated Avalokitsevara bodhisattva statue was produced in 1330.

This great achievement by the people was an expression of those wishes. Buddhist monks and believers, along with members of the lower classes, created it in the hopes of joining together to realize a warless world and a peaceful passage into the afterlife.

Many centuries later, a list of people who placed a message of prayer inside the Buseok Temple statue’s body at the time of its creation was discovered in 1951. It included the names of monks such as Simhye and Hyecheong, along with everyday people identities by names such as “Kim Yong,” “Kim Dong,” and “Ddori.”

“In creating this Buddha statue, we express our wish as people connected in the aim of delivering humankind from the sufferings of this world,” they wrote. “With eternally replete offerings, we wish for blessings in this life and rebirth in ultimate bliss in the next.”

A message discovered within the body of the bodhisattva statue in 1951 while in the possession of Japan’s Kannon Temple in Tsushima relates the creators’ hopes for “delivering humankind from the sufferings of this world” and “blessings in this life and rebirth and ultimate bliss in the next.” (courtesy of Busan Museum Director Jeong Eun-joo)

But history had some tricks up its sleeve. The statue created by the people of Goryeo as an expression of their noble love of humankind has now turned into a Pandora’s box — an endless source of debate between South Korea and Japan.

It all started in October 2012, when a ring of South Korean thieves stole a Buddhist statue that had been enshrined at the ancient Kannon Temple on the Japanese island of Tsushima (known as Daema Island in Korea) since the 16th century. After smuggling the statue into South Korea, they were caught attempting to sell it the following January, and the piece was confiscated.

Believed to have been transported to Japan between the 14th and 16th centuries, the statue had a topknot and appeared to have originally included a jeweled crown.

With its peaceful smile and other features rendered in detailed carving, it was an exquisitely crafted work from the late Goryeo era that had long drawn attention from South Korea’s Buddhist art history world. Marks of fire damage and the absence of the crown suggested its journey to Japan had been a rocky one.

As a designated cultural heritage of Nagasaki Prefecture — and a stolen item to boot — it was clear at the time of its discovery that it should be returned to Japan. The Japanese ambassador to South Korea made a request accordingly to the Cultural Heritage Administration (CHA), which signaled its intent to comply in accordance with international conventions prescribing the return of illegally removed artifacts.

The Kannon Temple in Japan where the Goryeo-era bodhisattva statue was once housed before being stolen and brought to Korea. (courtesy of Busan Museum Director Jeong Eun-joo)

But the debate ignited further as monks and followers at Buseok Temple and other members of the Buddhist community in Korea formed a “redemption committee,” arguing that the statue had been plundered in the first place by the Japanese in the 14th century.

In late February 2013, the Daejeon District Court accepted an injunction request filed by Buseok Temple against the state to request a prohibition on the piece’s transfer. In its injunction decision, the court granted a three-year deferment of the statue’s return.

Shortly after that period expired, Buseok Temple filed another suit in 2016 to request the transfer of the statue’s possession. The debate deepened into an ownership battle, and a first trial ruling from the Daejeon District Court in 2017 found the temple to hold its ownership rights.

On Feb. 1 of this year, a second trial ruling by the Daejeon High Court concluded that the ownership lay with Kannon Temple instead. Amid these varying outcomes, a war of wills has been heating up between the South Korean and Japanese governments and temples.

Historically, the period when the statue was enshrined at Buseok Temple in the early to mid-14th century was one of rampant Japanese looting along the peninsula’s western coast, with temples in the capital city of Gaegyeong (now Kaesong in North Korea) also suffering losses.

Unfortunately, no evidence has survived to prove that the statue in question was actually plundered. No records or other historical basis currently exists to document the process of its removal to Japan six centuries ago.

The Seated Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva of Boseok Temple in Seosan as it was displayed at the Kannon Temple in Japan before being stolen and smuggled to Korea. (courtesy of Busan Museum Director Jeong Eun-joo)

The only record that has survived is Kannon Temple’s historical chronology, which states that the statue was present at the temple in the year 1526. This opens up the possibility that it could have arrived in Japan through some circumstance or another in the 14th to 15th centuries and circulated for some time before arriving at Kannon Temple — or else it could have been taken directly to the temple in the 16th century.

In research reports, experts have suggested a strong possibility that it was plundered, given the history of Japanese marauding.

To be sure, there was also a practice of giving Buddhist scriptures and paraphernalia to Japan as gifts in the late Goryeo and early Joseon periods, so the possibility of it having been sold to Japan or given as a gesture of goodwill cannot be ruled out.

While the likelihood of it being plunder is strongly suspected, most academics agreed that the lack of decisive evidence means no firm conclusions can be drawn.

The statue clearly is stolen property, and returning it would seem to be the right thing to do. But from the standpoint of Koreans who have had their cultural heritage ruthlessly pillaged by Japan in the past, many find it difficult to emotionally accept the idea of handing over a magnificent work that they believe could very well have been stolen from them.

Artifacts were discovered within the bodhisattva statue when it was examined at Kannon Temple in Japan in 1951. (courtesy of Busan Museum Director Jeong Eun-joo)

In its ruling dismissing Buseok Temple’s transfer request, the Daejeon High Court separately commented on the “need for the government to address the matter of the statue’s return in consideration of the ideas of international law, which aims to protect cultural heritage, and the purpose of conventions concerning the return of cultural heritage.”

In the end, the two sides’ governments, cultural heritage experts, and Buddhists will have to come together for a disinterested dialogue to find a solution that honors the spirit of connection and coexistence in the statue’s Goryeo-era creators.

By Roh Hyung-suk, culture correspondent

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