Baekje Kingdom's iconic incense burner gets its own museum hall
BUYEO, South Chungcheong Province — In 1993, at an old temple site in Buyeo, archaeologists uncovered an unexpected marvel during the construction of a parking lot: a gilt-bronze incense burner from the Baekje Kingdom (18 BC–660 AD), buried beneath more than a thousand years of accumulated soil. Preserved in astonishingly pristine condition, the sixth-century relic startled excavators not only with its size — standing 62.3 centimeters tall — but also with the precision of its craftsmanship, enough for the state to designate it a National Treasure just three years later. Three decades after its chance discovery, the iconic burner now glows in its own sanctuary at the Buyeo National Museum, where a three-story hall was built solely to house this masterpiece. Fashioned through sophisticated lost-wax casting and mercury amalgam gilding, the incense burner contains an entire microcosm shaped by Taoist and Buddhist ideals. Across its surface rise jagged mountain ridges and winding waterfalls; lotus blossoms emerge amid the terrain, while Chinese phoenixes, dragons, tigers and crocodil
Dec 22, 2025By Park Han-sol
