Buddha’s Birthday Commemoration: ‘Worin Cheongangjigok’ Celebration Concert
Staged Twice at Bongeunsa and Pyeongtaek Art Center
Leading Artists Including Park Beom-hun and Son Jin-chaek Join Forces
Staged Twice at Bongeunsa and Pyeongtaek Art Center
Leading Artists Including Park Beom-hun and Son Jin-chaek Join Forces
Organizers will present a celebration of Worin Cheongangjigok — the first Buddhist hymn written in Hangul — at Bongeunsa in Seoul’s Gangnam district and at the Pyeongtaek Art Center in Gyeonggi Province to mark Buddha’s Birthday in the Buddhist year 2570. Officials say a roster of Korea’s leading performing artists aims to broaden the horizons of contemporary Buddhist music. The Jogye Order’s central office and the Pyeongtaek Cultural Foundation announced on the 5th that the program, titled "2026 Celebration Concert — Worin Cheongangjigok, the Buddha’s Song Composed by King Sejong," will be staged twice: on the 17th at an outdoor special stage at Bongeunsa and on the 18th in the main hall of the Pyeongtaek Art Center.
Worin Cheongangjigok is a devotional hymn King Sejong composed in Hangul to promote the spread of Hunminjeongeum and to pray for Queen Soheon’s rebirth in the Pure Land. He fashioned the Buddha’s life into a song meant for common people to sing; the work is widely regarded as both a new type of devotional music and the founding piece of Korean Buddhist music.
Only the text of Worin Cheongangjigok survived through the centuries, carrying the image that "as the moon is reflected in a thousand rivers, Buddhahood dwells in all beings." Park Beom-hun, director of the Buddhist Music Institute and a composer, drew on historical documents to set the text as a two-hour choral cantata. He premiered that composition at the National Theater’s 50th-anniversary production marking its move to Namsan in 2023 to notable acclaim.
For this run, organizers selected the work’s principal arias and reshaped them into a roughly 1 hour 20 minute program. Park Beom-hun will handle composition and conducting; Son Jin-chaek is the general director; Guk Su-ho choreographs; and Kim Seong-nyeo will coach singing and acting. Traditional Korean orchestras (the Bongeunsa Gugak Ensemble and the Pyeongtaek City Gugak Orchestra) will be joined by guest Western instruments — horn, trombone and cello — and a large combined chorus (Bongeunsa’s Shurimala, the Buddhist Music Institute’s Buleumkkot, and the Met Opera) will perform alongside the Chae Hyang-sun Dance Company.
Some of the era’s foremost vocalists will take central roles: Kim Junsu will portray the Buddha (Sejon), Kim Su-in will play King Sejong, and Lee So-yeon will portray Queen Soheon. Folk singer Park Ae-ri will sing the cantata’s "Nirvana" section, while Yu Tae-pyong and Hong Seung-hee will assume the dochang (narrator/chant leader) parts, completing the dramatic arc.
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