Baeknyeonsa, Goryeosan

Quick facts

Address

231 Bugeun-ri, Hajeom-myeon, Ganghwa-gun, Incheon

About this place

Baeknyeonsa stands on Goryeosan in Hajeom-myeon, Ganghwa-gun, Incheon, and the record gives its founding as 416. In the Three Kingdoms period an Indian monk whose name is not handed down reached Goryeosan on Ganghwado and found at the summit a pond where lotuses of five colours were in full bloom. He plucked the five kinds of lotus and sent them up into the air, and built a temple wherever each flower came down; the place where the white lotus fell, it is said, was called Baeknyeonsa.

Origin and history

The record gives the founding of Baeknyeonsa on Goryeosan as 416.

In the Three Kingdoms period an Indian monk whose name is not handed down reached Goryeosan on Ganghwado and found at the summit a pond where lotuses of five colours were in full bloom.

He plucked the five kinds of lotus and sent them up into the air, and built a temple wherever each flower came down. The place where the white lotus fell, it is said, was called Baeknyeonsa.

What it is locally associated with

• Origin

  Where the white lotus fell

  The monk sent five kinds of lotus into the air and built a temple wherever each came down; the place of the white one was called Baeknyeonsa.

  folk tradition

• Origin

  A pond of five colours at the summit

  An Indian monk whose name is not handed down reached Goryeosan and found at the summit a pond where lotuses of five colours were in full bloom.

  folk tradition

• What people do here

  A founding given as 416

  The record gives the founding of Baeknyeonsa on Goryeosan as 416.

  documented history

Where this temple would stand was settled by throwing. The Indian monk plucked lotuses of five colours from a pond at the top of Goryeosan and sent them into the air, and built a temple at each place one came down. This is where the white one fell. The ground was chosen not by anyone’s judgement but by a flower’s landing point.

This site holds a few places sited by something other than a person. In Fukuoka there are shrines whose own accounts hand the choice to an animal; at Sinheungsa in Sapporo the site was fixed by a divine being’s instruction in a vow. Here it was a flower.

The name came from the same landing. It is Baeknyeonsa because that is where the white lotus fell. Several Ganghwa temples took their names this way — Jeondeungsa from a jade lamp, Jeongsusa from water seen rising.

The founder’s name does not survive. The record says only an Indian monk whose name is not handed down. The founding is given as 416.

Related guides

• How to visit a Korean templeHands together and hands folded, how the bows work, and what to do at the threshold of a hall. Starting with what is different from visiting a Japanese shrine.
• The small hall behind the main one — sansingak and samseonggakUphill from the main hall of a Korean temple stands a smaller one, and inside it an old man with a tiger. This is where the indigenous religion sits, inside the Buddhist institution.
• Templestay — a night at a templeA programme that puts you inside a temple’s own timetable for a day or two. What you do, which type to book, and what to be ready for.
• Prayer sites and the one wishThe three great Gwaneum sites, the five relic halls, and the crowds before the entrance exam. Where the saying about one wish comes from, and where the record stops.

Sources

1. 고려산 백련사(高麗山 白蓮寺) — 한국민족문화대백과사전 (accessed 2026-08-16)