A Study on the Evolution of Palace and Government Office Building Sites during the Baekje Sabi Period : Focusing on Busosanseong Fortress in Buyeo

This study reexamines existing excavation data of the building sites within Busosanseong Fortress, which has been studied as the royal palace site of Baekje during the Sabi Period. The study explores the nature and transformation of the palace and government office buildings from the late Baekje period. While past research has primarily recognized the sites within Busosanseong Fortress as those of sunken-floor dwellings, recent studies have revealed that these sunken-floor buildings were constructed during the Unified Silla period. Instead, the primary building sites identified include raised-pole buildings, wall-supported buildings, and those with fired brick foundations. In particular, research on the Baekje Sabi period buildings has mainly focused on religious structures, such as temples. This has made it challenging to understand the transformation of building sites related to the royal palace and government offices. While the highest quality materials and advanced techniques were employed in both the royal and religious buildings, religious structures often used selective architectural styles and materials based on doctrinal and faith-based needs. Moreover, when foreign religions were introduced, their architectural styles were brought in, potentially leading to different forms of construction compared to the royal and government office buildings. The study finds that the building sites of the Baekje royal palace and government offices at Busosanseong can be divided into three distinct phases of transformation. The first phase, from the early 6th century to the late 6th century, during the relocation of the capital to Sabi, shows that the primary structures were raised-pole buildings and wall-supported buildings similar to those of the earlier Gongjin period. The second phase, from the late 6th century until the 31st year of King Mu’s reign (630 AD), saw the raising of the building platforms and the construction of raised-brick foundation buildings (basal buildings) that became the main structures. The third phase, from the early 7th century (630 AD) until the fall of Baekje in the mid-7th century (660 AD), was marked by the cessation of new building types within Busosanseong, with large palace buildings at Gwanbuk-ri and Wanggung-ri becoming the central structures. The transformations of building types and the locations of the central buildings align with the changes in the political and administrative centers of the Sabi capital and the royal palace area.