The Breath of Gaya

A 2,000-year-old kingdom was breathing beneath every step I took, but back then, it was just a pleasant hill, a part of my neighborhood. It was a city so familiar that I had taken it for granted.
Then one day, the familiar scenery began to feel strange. It was 2023, when the Gaya Tumuli were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The realization that the dirt paths I had carelessly walked upon were actually a heritage of "Outstanding Universal Value" that humanity must preserve came as a fresh shock?and a strange sense of debt.
"How much do I really know about Gaya?"
That curiosity moved me. I stepped beyond Gimhae and traveled to Goryeong, Changnyeong, Hapcheon, Haman, Namwon, and Goseong. I am not an archaeologist digging the earth to prove history, nor am I a historian analyzing ancient texts to verify dates. I simply wanted to be a guide connecting people and culture through travel, looking at these massive burial mounds through a humanistic lens.
The journey that started there became this book, The Breath of Gaya.
We often think of graves as spaces of death. But standing in front of Gaya's tumuli, that thought quickly changes. Ancient tombs were not just places for the dead. They were a universe condensing the worldview of those who lived fiercely, a massive archive showing what humans loved and what they wished to leave behind.
This book is a humanistic journey of iron and earth, tracing the footprints of those "people." The people of Gaya forged a powerful nation and technology with hard, cold Iron, while shaping life and embracing death with soft, warm Earth. Instead of looking at artifacts trapped in museum display cases, I tried to imagine the rough breathing and warm touch of the Gaya people who actually held and used these objects 1,500 years ago.
We will walk along the Hwanggang River in Hapcheon and feel the weight of the earth piled high on the ridges of Jisandong in Goryeong. We will read their aesthetics in the flame-patterned pottery of Ara-Gaya in Haman, and glimpse the spirit of the Iron Kingdom reaching out to the sea in Gimhae and Goseong. On the high plateaus of Namwon and the embankments of Changnyeong, we will breathe in the old names of the land and the wind of today together.
This book is seven walks connecting seven tumuli clusters and cities, a journey to listen to the heartbeat of a forgotten kingdom. We will read life from the tombs, feel the people from the artifacts, and stroll through past times within today's spaces.