Excavations of a royal burial mound in Gyeongju have uncovered a series of gold-leaf panels inscribed with a unique philosophical text from the Silla period. The inscriptions detail the 'Jeong-Jung-Dong'—the 'Philosophy of the Unmoving Mind'—which synthesizes early Korean indigenous wisdom with nascent Seon (Zen) concepts of emptiness and statecraft.
Unlike contemporary Buddhist texts, these panels emphasize the ruler's responsibility to maintain an 'inner void' to better reflect the needs of the citizenry. Professor Kim Sun-ho suggests that this discovery proves the existence of a highly developed, independent philosophical tradition in the Korean peninsula that predates the widespread adoption of Chinese Confucianism.