Historic Landscape Preservation and Recovery of the Surface History of Gyeongju

摘要

Gyeongju, with its thousand-year history of the Silla Dynasty, is an impressive historical city where the beautiful natural setting of mountains in the background and rivers in its forefront coexist with the city landscape.The historic landscape of Gyeongju is divided into three groups: the old town, the ruins preservation region to the southeast of the old town, and the natural landscape region surrounding these regions.The old town region shows the common landscape that general small cities in Korea may have, while its surroundings display the overlap of natural and historic landscapes.This special city landscape is offered only in Gyeongju.Nevertheless, the northern area of the old town was built based on the concept of new towns, lacking height restriction for buildings and damaging the historic landscape of Gyeongju.This was a misjudgment that occurred by interpreting the cultural heritage as an individual artifact rather than a continuous historic landscape.Since the 1970s, when rapid industrialization and urbanization arose side-by-side with a comprehensive development for Gyeongju tourism, the historic landscape has been slowly eroded.There has not been adequate financial and political support from the central government because the project for Gyeongju tourism was focused only on an investment in the tourist industry.Now, in order to preserve historical cities like Gyeongju, which represent the culture of Korea, the central government should actively engage in its protection.Policies of the central government should be focused on educating people about the historical restoration of Gyeongju being a way of recovering national pride and seek to draw public consensus.To do so, the government should change its policy from an economic-oriented to a culture-oriented process.That is, the cultural policy should be emphasized.