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HELLO from KOREA

Hello-Eng(3.3) - Korea.net

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69 _ Places<br />

Buddhist followers doing tapdori, a ritual of walking around a pagoda<br />

Did You Know?<br />

One of Asia’s most comprehensive<br />

collections of the<br />

Buddhist canon is preserved<br />

at Haeinsa Temple in Gyeongsangnam-do.<br />

Known among<br />

Westerners as the Tripitaka<br />

Koreana, the scriptures were<br />

carved on over 80,000 wood<br />

blocks, without a single error.<br />

The project was under-taken<br />

as a plea to keep the invading<br />

Mongols out and was completed<br />

in 1252 after 16 years of<br />

work.<br />

Even today the blocks remain in<br />

excellent condition and are the<br />

basis for the most authoritative<br />

texts of Buddhist scripture.<br />

These are Included on the<br />

UNESCO World Cultural<br />

Heritage List.<br />

Shrines<br />

Countless shrines dot the countryside, but<br />

they honor not so much the individual heros<br />

as the values they lived by and died for.<br />

Many are memorials to a faithful daughter or<br />

son, for Koreans revered hyodo, or filial<br />

piety, as the highest virtue.<br />

Some even honor animals. In the village of<br />

Osu in Jeollabuk-do Province, there is a<br />

gravestone marked "the grave of a faithful<br />

dog." It was erected in honor of a dog which<br />

sacrificed his own life while trying to put out<br />

flames engulfing his master, who had fallen<br />

in a drunken stupor. The local magistrate<br />

himself reportedly wrote the inscription.<br />

But the most heartbreaking legend in

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