Won Buddhism Iksan Central Headquarters

The headquarters began with two thatched buildings

In 1924, Sotaesan and his disciples chose a sparsely settled hillside north of Iksan for the new center of their movement. A supporter donated roughly 3,000 pyeong of wooded land, and the community supplied both money and labor. By late that year, two wooden thatched buildings totaling 17 kan were standing

The early headquarters was also a working settlement. Members farmed, sold yeot and cleared wasteland by day, then studied at night. That mixture of labor, education and religious practice shaped the community Sotaesan led here for the next 18 years

The first compound survives inside the modern campus

The headquarters expanded steadily, but its early core was not erased. Eight wooden buildings and two stone monuments from the 1920s and 1930s are now registered heritage, including Bonwonsil, Geumgangwon, Gonghoedang, Cheonghawon and Daegakjeon

Their dates turn the compound into a physical timeline. Bonwonsil belongs to the first 1924 settlement; Geumgangwon followed in 1927, Gonghoedang in 1929, Cheonghawon in 1932 and Daegakjeon in 1935. Later administrative and religious buildings grew around them instead of replacing the original nucleus

A sacred site is still a headquarters

The Iksan site remains the central administrative and religious headquarters of Won Buddhism. The offices of the Head Dharma Master, central administration and Supreme Council sit within the same broad campus where the early community lived and studied

That continuing use changes the visit. The historic buildings are not an isolated museum village: they sit inside a functioning religious institution whose modern offices, worship spaces and educational facilities still serve the national organization. One clear visual break is the Half-Century Memorial Hall, a three-story reinforced-concrete building whose restored main auditorium now seats about 1,500 people—a very different scale from the two thatched buildings of 1924

The campus is larger than the heritage core

Public walking routes pass through landscaped grounds, later halls and the preserved Sotaesan-era buildings. More than a dozen major points are spread across the headquarters and Iksan Holy Ground, so the scale is closer to a small institutional campus than a single temple

The early buildings deserve priority because they explain everything that came later. Once the two-building settlement is clear, the larger headquarters reads as the institutional expansion of that first communal experiment

Before you go

Start with Bonwonsil and the other registered early buildings before moving through the later headquarters. That order makes the shift from improvised 1920s settlement to national religious administration visible on foot